


How We Live Now

by i_am_still_bb



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Death, Dystopian, Fili and Kili are cousins, How I Live Now AU, M/M, Short Chapters, World War III, rated mature for violence and war themes, very short chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:27:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 95
Words: 29,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22855450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_am_still_bb/pseuds/i_am_still_bb
Summary: Everything changed during the summer that his father and his step-mother exiled him to England. Part of that was because of the war, which supposedly changed most things, but he didn't like his life before the war all that much do that doesn't count.Mostly everything changed because of Fili.---Short Serial Entries
Relationships: Fíli/Kíli (Tolkien)
Comments: 156
Kudos: 45





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying short, serial entries. They are posted to Tumblr first along with other multimedia posts. [See all content here!](https://i-am-still-bb.tumblr.com/tagged/how-we-live-now)

His parents named him Keil when he was born. It means "wedge" and maybe that should have told them something. If they had wanted him to be different they should have called him Jonah or Calum or something boring like John or Sam, but his father had wanted to honor their German ancestors, as if Schmidt wasn't German enough.

No one other than his father ever called him Keil.

He was Kili since before he could walk.

And he liked it that way.

Later he would like it because it rhymed with his cousin's name. Not that he knew his cousins when he was small. He only knew what was written in Christmas cards--and he didn't bother to listen most of the time--and the pictures enclosed in those cards that, until his mother had died, had gone up in a frame on the wall in the hall.

Everything changed during the summer that his father and his step-mother exiled him to England. Part of that was because of the war, which supposedly changed most things, but Kili didn't like his life before the war all that much, so that doesn't count.

Mostly everything changed because of Fili.

  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Kili scowls out the window of the plane at the fields that are vibrantly green despite the drizzle of rain and the low clouds that envelop the earth.

Out of habit he digs his phone out of his pocket to check his notifications.

There are none.

And he is reminded that his cell phone will not work here without wifi, or a new SIM card. And he wonders if his Aunt Julie will be willing to stop by a cell phone store.

The plane landed twenty minutes ago and they still have not been allowed to deplane.

Kili has been staring out the window and the workers flit across the pavement under the watchful eyes of men in camouflage. Dogs dutifully sniff all of the luggage as it rolls past them on the conveyor belt.

Kili taps his foot impatiently. He wants to say something to the large woman in the seat next to his. She stood up the moment the plane landed and she has been busy complaining loudly ever since. Worse yet she keeps shifted around to get comfortable, which results in Kili knowing all too well that her leggings are quite transparent in places and that she is wearing a bright pink thong.

He studiously turns his attention back to his lap where he picks at a thread on his jeans. 

Picks at the dirt under his nails.

He taps his foot faster. He wants to wash his hands.  _ Now. _

He wants off this plane. _ Now. _

He scrolls uselessly through his phone just for something to do, something to distract himself. In his e-mail app he is confronted with the e-mail his father and step-mother must have sent right after dropping him off at JFK. They probably sent it from the short-term parking lot. It was clear, however, that they had spent quite a lot of time composing the missive.

_ Why wait until I'm effectively out of their lives for good to tell me this shit. _

He had closed the e-mail without reading the whole thing before the plane took off. He starts reading it again and he still only makes it to the part where his step-mother is gushing about how much she loves him.

He shoves the phone deep into the pocket of his jeans.

"Bullshit," he mutters under his breath.

  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

Kili stuffs his earbuds in his ears to try and block out the whining of his fellow passengers and he does not remove them until a customs agent gesticulates exaggeratedly at him to remove them. He answers the woman's questions shortly and sarcastically if he answers at all until the agent stamps his passport and wavs him away with an exasperated gesture.

Kili snatches his beat up duffle from the floor at his feet and stomps out into the arrival hall. His Doc Martens feel solidly heavy and protective. Between them, his earbuds, and his pounding music he feels safe.

Secure.

And he feels even safer, even more in control of his situation after he washes up in the restroom.

He stands beside a pillar and looks from someone that resembles the woman in the posed Christmas photos. The newest of which was more than four years old by now.

He glances around. There is a crowd of people watching a news station on the television suspended from the ceiling. There are flames on the screen and the reporter is saying something about bombs, Paris, and Bucharest.. Kili doesn’t watch the news at home and he’s not about to start now. He looks instead at the crumpling and worried faces of the adults watching the television. 

He shrugs.

Again he pulls out his phone with the intention of texting or e-mailing his aunt to ask where she was, forgetting his lack of network and the fact that he does not have any contact information for his aunt other than her address.

No one looks right.

He imagines a woman with short cropped hair and a severe outfit. But as the arrival hall empties it becomes obvious that she did not come for him. There are only a few stragglers left. 

"Just fucking fantastic," Kili grumbles, glad that no one is there to scold him about his language and how might affected the  _ baby. _

A scrawny boy with hair that looked like he had cut it himself stands in front of Kili and says something.

"What?" Kili snaps, yanking a single earbud out.

"Cousin Keil?" the boy repeats.

"The only person who calls me Keil is my father. And he's an asshole."

The boy's mouth forms an "o" and he opens and closes his mouth a few times looking for words.

"It's Kili, if that’s alright with you." Kili finally replies shortly. "Which one are you?" He looks down at the boy's rubber boots and cut-off jean shorts before coming back to his face that features a smear of dirt and crooked glasses.

The boy seems glad to have a normal question to answer, "I'm Miles. My mum sent me to come get you. She’s been busy. Follow me." He takes off through the hall through the double doors. Both boys dodge men in camouflage uniforms with guns strapped to their backs and think nothing of it.

"Where's the car?" Kili grumbles as he follows Miles through the parking lot.

"Just over here." Miles climbs over a low stone wall on the edge of the parking lot. "Can you believe that they charge 15 quid for thirty minutes of parking?" He laughs.

Kili snorts and stares at the mud that is now clinging to his boots. He uses one boot to scrape the mud from the other. But it is useless. He resolves to wash them as soon as he can. Until then he resolutely doesn’t look at his feet.

They emerge onto a narrow paved track. The only vehicle is a truck that has clearly seen better days. Miles grabs Kili's duffle and shoves it in the back.

"Get in," he points to the passenger door.

Kili looks at the truck as Miles climbs into the driver's seat. "How old are you?"

"Fourteen."

"Are you even allowed to drive?" Kili asks incredulously.

"I've been driving since I was six!" The truck rumbles loudly to life after a few sputters.

"I thought Aunt Julie would be driving." Kili crosses his arms.

"I told you she was busy. She sent me. You could take the bus if you like, but it'll take about 9 hours and the next one isn't until," he checks his watch," tomorrow morning."

Kili takes another look at the truck, brushes the straw from his seat, and tries to ignore the hole in the floor that lets him see the pavement rushing by and Miles roughly pulls onto the road and narrowly misses hitting another car. 

He quickly tires of looking at cars and trucks that looked different from those at home. He had tried to count the number of army green vehicles, antennae waving, in a convoy that they passed, but after 37 he gave up and shut his eyes. Kili falls asleep on the long drive from the airport; he is lulled by the sounds of the highway and lack of anything to do. 

Miles had tried talking to Kili initially, but even his nervous ramblings petered off with Kili's lack of response.

  
  
  



	4. Chapter 4

Kili only wakes when the vehicle comes to a rough stop.

"Where are we?" Kili asks gazing out the grimy window at the stone courtyard in front of a large stone home. It was stately once, but now some windows were cracked, painting was peeling, and straw, animals, and discarded toys littered the courtyard. Kili was fairly certain he had seen a goat wearing a tutu before the animal disappeared into the garden.

"Home," is Miles' only response. He smiles.

Kili climbs out of the truck with stiff legs and stars at the property.

"He's here! He's here!" A voice shouts as something rather heavy slams into Kili's legs from behind.

  
  
  



	5. Chapter 5

"Cousin Keil!" The cannonball shrieks in a pitch that makes Kili wince and cover his ears. He lowers his hands when she speaks at a more reasonable volume. But he misses the first part of her sentence.

"-ry glad you've come to visit us, Keil."

Kili likes her instantly.

"It's Kili," Miles corrects and pushes his younger sister away. "Leave him alone, Hazel."

Kili looks at his youngest cousin. She must be the one that was a toddler in the last picture.

She nods in a serious way that makes Kili feel like she will remember.

A crackle and roar that rises in volume snaps Kili's attention to the sky.

"What is that?" he demands.

Miles shrugs his thin shoulders. "Dunno. But it's been happening for a while.

"Come on. I'll show you your room."

Miles grabs Kili's duffle from him before he can protest and leads him into the kitchen which opens off the courtyard. There is a thick wooden door. When Kili moves to shut it Miles stops him.

"We leave it open most of the time. Unless it’s actually snowing," he tosses over his shoulder as he disappears through another door.

Kili doesn't move.

"What about bugs?"

He can hear Miles’ laughter moving further away. "They'd just find other ways to get in!"

  
  
  



	6. Chapter 6

Kili is careful not to touch anything as he walks through the kitchen. He wonders when it was last cleaned and promptly decides that he does not want to know. 

_ It is better if you don't know. _

His fingers twitch when he passes the sink, but the thought of touching the handles or the faucet sends shivers down his spine.

He notices that the doorway that takes him into the hall is not square.

Later, when he explores the house more he will discover that the house is even more jumbled than he originally imagined. There are hallways that don't lead anywhere. There is even a door that opens to a stone wall.

The windows are huge, but there are not curtains covering the smeared glass. Through the grim rolling hills and a densely planted garden can be seen with leaves and flowers bursting.

The rooms he passes as he follows Miles are cavernous, but look much smaller because they are scattered with oversized furniture, blankets, and the odds and ends of life in a home that's been occupied by the same family for generations.

One fireplace is so large that Kili thinks he could stand in it without having to duck his head.

The stairs creak.

Miles' continuous chatter starts up again. He's explaining about the garden and how it’s really just for decoration and how Farmer Osbert from down the road tends it and how they have pigs and goats for  _ decoration _ because it goes with the old house, but the only animals that the kids take care of is their dog and whatever cats happen to be around. 

Kili interrupts Miles’ monologue.

"Isn't there a third one?"

Miles stops in the middle of the staircase a few steps ahead of Kili, making them the same height. His face screws up in confusion. "Third one?"

Kili frowns in frustration. "Of you," he gestures exasperatedly and smacks his hand into the wall of the absurdly narrow staircase. He swears.

"You mean Fili."

  
  
  



	7. Chapter 7

“This is your room,” Miles shoves open the door at the end of the hall. 

Kili steps into the room steeped in late afternoon sunlight. “Thank god,” he mutters and drops his bag as unceremoniously on the floor before darting to the sink in the corner.

He turns on the water and  _ scrubs _ . 

A continuous narrative of germs and disease runs in the back of his mind as he squirts more soap onto his fingers.

Miles places Kili’s duffle on the bed. “You’ve got the best room in the house.”

Kili says nothing.

Once he is done washing and is drying his hands he turns back to the room and sees Miles still standing beside the bed. 

“What’s your wifi password?” Kili places the folded towel over the end of the black metal bedframe.

Miles cocks his head. Before he can start on some rambling answer Kili interrupts.

“For your internet.”

“Oh. Mum’s got internet on the computer in her office. We can use it when she’s not there, but she’s been busy lately and…”

“What about wifi?” Kili says shortly digging out his phone and opening the settings to look for a wireless signal.

Nothing.

Miles shakes his head. 

Kili chucks his phone onto the neat bedspread. He’ll need a new SIM card then. “When will your mom get back?”

“She’s working in her office right now, we don’t usually see her until dark. We’re not s’posed to bother her.”

“Just great,” Kil grumbles sarcastically. “Get out.”

Miles darts for the door and Kili is left alone.


	8. Chapter 8

Sometime later when the sun is lower but still filling the room with warm light Hazel pushes the door open and sticks her head in.

“Cousin Kili,” she says, a smile wide on her face. “Do you like your room? It’s the best one.” With that she pushes the door open further and proceeds to sit in the middle of his bed. 

Kili looks over from where he’s been sitting in the window seat. His phone is pretty much useless without wifi but that doesn’t mean that he hasn't spent the last 2 hours swiping uselessly through his apps.

And he still hasn’t read that e-mail.

He came close to deleting it, but something stopped him.

“It’s okay.” He pulls his knees up to his chest, wraps his arms around them, and rests his cheek on one knee. He chooses to face Hazel rather than the verdant world outside his window. He had noticed the sparrows and had watched them a little, but he had eventually gone back to his phone.

“Can I get you a cup of tea?” Hazel asks solemnly. “Mum says I’m supposed to ask guests if they want tea.”

“I’m okay.” He sighs heavily through his nose. 

They sit in silence for several minutes.

“How old are you, Cousin Kili?” Hazel asks suddenly.

“Fifteen,” Kili mumbles to his knees.

“I’m nine!” she says brightly. “Miles’ fourteen and Fili’s sixteen. He’s almost a grown up.” Hazel finishes proudly. 

Kili makes a noncommittal noise and turns his head to look out the window again.

He hears Hazel leave the room. The hallways' floorboards squeak quietly beneath her footsteps. They protest louder when she returns. Then she is in his room again. 

“Here,” she shyly places a dark blanket on top of his feet. “It was made from black sheep who used to live here a long time ago.”

“Thanks.”

Kili unfolds the blanket and wraps it around his shoulders. He wasn’t cold, but this makes him feel safe. 

When Hazel doesn’t say anything or move Kili says, “I think I’m going to take a nap.”

Hazel rubs at her nose, but does not leave.

“I’d like to be alone,” Kili enunciates.

“Oh, alright,” Hazel grumbles. This time she stomps down the hallway. 

Kili almost feels bad for sending her away, but in a few minutes he hears her laughter from the courtyard below. 

He wraps the blanket tighter around his shoulders. 

He looks past the courtyard to the woods and the fields beyond the black and rust-colored stone walls. 

He sees someone walking there. His strides are long and purposeful with his golden hair catching in the late afternoon sun and his green sweater blending into the landscape.

  
  


_ Fili. _

  
  
  



	9. Chapter 9

Kili did not intend to sleep for the rest of the day, the whole night, and well into the next morning.

But that is what happened.

He quickly learned that the house was certainly not quiet in the mornings.

He finds Hazel, Miles, and another boy in the kitchen sitting at the large wooden dining table. Hazel is using a dinner plate to hold some paints and her cup of paint water is mixed in with old glasses and new glasses filled to the brim with orange juice, which has also been spilled on the table leaving everything sticky.

“Have some breakfast!” Miles says too loudly for the early hour. “We’ve made enough for an army!” He shoves an overflowing plate of scrambled eggs in Kili’s direction.

Kili pushes it back a few inches. 

The room is filled with excited conversation. Miles and the other boy are making their plans for the day.

“That’s Peter,” Hazel informs him without looking up from her painting. She looks like she’s been up for hours. The ends of her bright red hair are still damp from a bath. “He lives next door, but he stays here most of the time.”

Kili nods and squeezes his hands between his legs.

“Where’s Aunt Julie?”

Miles breaks off from his conversation about fishing to answer. “She had some sort of emergency meeting down in London. She won’t be back until late.”

“She’s an expert in loony extremists,” Hazel says matter-of-factly. 

“Shut up, Hazel,” Miles says. “Do you want any tea?” He asks Kili as he pours some for himself.

“No, thanks,” Kili replies and then he remembers that you’re supposed to drink 8 glasses of water a day. “Just some water.”

“She says there’s going to be a world war three,” Hazel continues. She continues applying paint to her paper.

“Shut up, Hazel. Stop being a dick and get Kili some water.” Miles flicks droplets of tea at her.

Hazel stands up so quickly that her chair falls over on the floor. “I’m not a dick!” she shouts at him. But then she clambers onto the countertop to get a clean glass from the cupboard and fills it with water. She pushes it into Kili’s hand before sitting back down.

“Don’t you want some breakfast?” she asks, skewering a rasher of bacon on a fork and holding it out to Kili.

“I don’t eat meat.” Kili answers after he finishes downing his glass of water.

“We have some cheese and bread,” Miles says around a mouthful of aforementioned cheese.

“I don’t eat cow cheese.”

Peter and Miles laugh. “What’s wrong with cow cheese?”

Kili leans forward on his elbows, carefully placed to avoid the spilled orange juice. “It’s basically solidified cow mucus.”

Miles looks incredulous, but he looks at his piece of cheese before dropping it on his plate and wiping his hands on the thighs of his shorts.

  
  
  



	10. Chapter 10

“We’re going fishing if you want to come,” Miles says when he sticks his head around the door.

“I don’t fish.”

Kili doesn’t look away from the window so he doesn’t see the hurt that flashes across Miles’ face. 

“Okay,” Miles says quietly as he shuts the door behind him.

Kili skips to the next song and turns up the volume so he cannot hear the creaking of the old house. 

His phone chirps with a notification. 

> **Low Battery  
> ** **10% Remaining**

He does not have a power adaptor. He turned on power saving mode and dimmed the brightness over an hour ago, but the battery will soon die. 

While the final minutes of battery life slip away Kili watches Miles, Peter, and Hazel gather dogs and fishing poles before disappearing down the path that leads into the woods. 

The battery dies mid-song.

Kili clicks the power button in the hopes that it will turn back on.

He pushes it away on the window seat and stares out the window.

  
  
  



	11. Chapter 11

Eventually, because he lacks anything better to do and he’s already tried taking a nap, he heads outside. He still tucks his now dead phone into his pocket where he can trace its shape with his fingers every so often. 

Kili shuts the kitchen door when he enters the courtyard. Today there is a large stuffed giraffe on a trampoline in the corner and a bike tossed on its side just inside the gate next to the old truck. Kili crosses his arms over his chest and turns into the gardens where flowers and vegetable plants flow over their confinement. 

He stumbles over a rock in the middle of the path and swears, but he keeps walking. The garden runs up against the woods and only a gate, so neglected that it sags against its hinges and won’t budge when Kili tries to close, and a low stone wall separates them.

A ginger cat lounges on a sunny rock. Kili lingers to scratch the cat behind the ears. It presses its head into his hands and headbutts him when he stops. “What’s your name?” he whispers to the cat. He presses his forehead to the cat’s head and continues scratching and rubbing the now purring animal.

Suddenly the cat stiffens. It bolts. A cacophony of barking surrounds Kili.

The dogs run into him. They jump. Their paws pull at his shirt.

“Get away!” Kili shouts and pushes at the animals.

He falls down in his rush to get away from them. He kicks with his feet and keeps yelling. 

“Go away!” His voice takes on a panicked pitch.

He holds his arms across his face. 

“Hey! Jeb, come here!” A voice commands. “Leave him alone! Toki. Come!”

The dogs disappear and the voice talks to them more quietly. “Get on you two. Go find Peter and Miles. 

“Just push them away next time and tell them to sit.” The voice approaches. But Kili barely hears it through the noise in his head.

_ He wants to change his shirt. _

_ He wants to wash away the mud from the dogs’ paws.  _

_ He wants… _

_ He needs... _

“Hey? Are you okay?” the voice is much closer this time.

Kili opens his eyes.

Lowers his arms. 

The person above him’s face is silhouetted in a halo of golden hair. His eyebrows furrow in concern.

  
  


_ Fili.  _

  
  


Kili knows this without asking. He knows it with the same certainty that he knows the sun will rise in the east. He sees that same steadiness, that same reliability, in the face before him.

Fili offers his hand.

Kili takes it.

And everything in Kili’s head goes quiet.

  
  
  



	12. Chapter 12

Fili repeats his question.

This time Kili hears it because all the noise inside his head is gone.

Kili swallows hard and nods his head. “Yeah. I’m alright.” He looks around for the ginger cat he had been petting, “But I’m not sure about the cat.”

“Gilbert.”

Kili frowns and looks over his shoulder. “Do you see him?”

“No. He’s probably gone into the house to hide.”

“Then how do you know which cat it was?”

Fili shrugs, turns on his heel, and is gone, disappearing into the overgrown garden.

Kili palms itch with the resurgent desire to clean up. But it does not  _ burn _ like it did before. “Probably have some sort of canine STD,” he mutters to himself.

Before going inside he glances over his shoulder looking for Fili.

  
  
  


  
  



	13. Chapter 13

Long after the house has fallen silent for the night—there had been a debacle and an ensuing war over bath bubbles that had involved much shouting, laughter, and stampeding through the house—Kili hears pacing and the one sided conversation of a telephone call.

He slips from his bed and pulls on a sweater before tiptoeing down the stairs. He steps close to the walls to avoid making any noise. His bare feet are nearly silent on the wooden floors.

“ _ —ave you any idea what you're proposing?” _

The only light comes from his Aunt Julie’s office. The door is cracked. 

_ “You’re going to lose any credibility that you have left.” _

Kili drifts closer so he can hear his aunt’s half of the conversation clearly.

_ “No!” _

Kili startles at the sharp tone.

_ “Our whole job is to focus on a ceasefire. To prevent deaths.” _

_ “There’s no point in going over this all again when I’m getting on a plane at 10am. We’ll be able to talk it all over then.” _

A floorboard creaks under Kili’s weight.

He freezes.

_ “I’m not being emotional!”  _ Julie snaps irritably.

Kili creeps closer and peeks through the cracked door.

Julie is seated in front of her computer. She slouches in her chair with her head in one hand while another holds her phone to her ear. The computer’s blue light illuminates the room, blending with the warm light of an unseen lamp. 

_ “The reason my e-mail mentioned my children is because we both know what might be about to happen and I have to get on a plane and I. Won’t. Be. Here. And you cannot expect me to be fucking calm about that.” _

Kili presses closer. Hoping to hear the other side of the conversation drifting through the phone’s speaker.

He bumps into the door.

The hinges squeal.

  
  



	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All previous chapters have undergone some minor edits. The later chapters have just been cleaned up a little in terms of grammar, syntax, etc. Earlier chapters have seen more extensive edits. I wanted to add a little bit more foreshadowing. I’m also still working on getting Kili’s voice right as well as the tone for the whole story. 
> 
> Edits were not extensive. You won’t miss anything important if you do not re-read earlier chapters. 
> 
> Cheers!

Julie turns sharply in her seat.

“Fili?”

Kili takes a deep breath. “No. It’s Kili. Keil.” 

He steps closer to the door and pushes it open so Julie can see him. 

Julie turns back to her computer for a brief moment. “Oh, Pierre... Pierre. I’ll call you back in five.” And she hangs up the phone. 

“Come in.”

Kili tugs at the hem of his shirt as he steps fully into the office.

“Hey,” Julie’s smile warms her voice. “Look at you.” She stands. She is still fully dressed including heels despite the fact that it’s going on 2am, and approaches him. She moves to touch his cheek.

Kili pulls away from her touch.

Julie lowers her hand. “I’m sorry that I’ve been so bloody useless and haven’t seen you so far…” 

She is interrupted by her phone ringing.

“One moment.”

She snatches her cellphone from the desk, “Hello … Yes. I’ve spoken to Pierre … I’ll call you right back. Just give me five minutes.”

She hangs up.

“It’s these peace accords. They’ve been an absolute nightmare,” Julie apologizes. “Please sit,” Julie gestures to one of the chairs, but it is covered with files. She hastily moves them to sit atop an already precarious stack and gestures for Kili to sit.

Kili is not looking at the open chair, his aunt, or the files in her hands. He is looking at the file open on her computer screen. 

There is a graph in bars of yellow, orange, and red. Beneath the bars are country names. Along the side it says “millions.” Across the top there is a title in bold black letters. 

**P R O J E C T E D D E A T H S A C R O S S M A I N L A N D E U R O P E**

  
  
  



	15. Chapter 15

Julie catches the direction of his gaze. She hastily steps to her computer and minimizes the window. “You know how it is. Prepare for the worst, but hope for the best.”

Her smile is less than reassuring.

Kil distracts himself by looking at the framed photographs on the walls.

“Is everything okay?” He sits on the recently cleared chair and squeezes his legs together.

Julie fishes cigarettes and lighter from a pocket of her cardigan. She lights one and sighs heavily. Her gaze rests on Kili. “Everything’s going to be fine.” Her smile is tight.

“Are you settling in okay?”

“It’s fine.” Kili shrugs.

“My children …” she is interrupted by the ringing phone. She quickly silences the call. “I hope my children are taking care of you.”

Kili does not answer.

“Well, now that I have a moment, I want to ask you something. I’m flying to Geneva in the morning and I cannot decide if I should tell your father about it. I don’t want to worry him,” she trails off. “What do you think?”

Kili shakes his head. “Don’t bother. If my dad cared I wouldn’t be here, so…”

Julie laughs.

Kili scowls and clenches his fists.

“I’m sorry. I really am, just when you said that you sounded so much like Ginny, your mother.” This time her smile is real and warm.

Kili relaxes.

“She loved it here. It was her favorite place.”

Kili meets her gaze, “My mother came here?”

“Yes! Didn’t your father ever tell you…” she doesn’t finish her sentence when she sees Kili’s expression. She gestures to the ceiling. “You’re actually staying in her old room.” 

Kili’s eyes burn with unshed tears. 

The phone rings.

Julie tenses and looks from the phone, to Kili, and back.

“Sorry,” she says quietly before snatching up her phone.

“Yes, I’m here.” She turns her office chair to face the computer again. She opens the previously closed windows. 

_“No. I’m right in front of it. If you tell me your thoughts I can get you an estimate.”_

Kili stands and moves towards the doorway.

“Oh. Kili?”

Kili turns back to Julie.

“Don’t worry about anything. Everything’s going to be fine. My brother-in-law will stop by to help look after things.” The tight smile is back. “Goodnight.”

  
  
  



	16. Chapter 16

Kili tugs on the cuffs of his flannel shirt the next morning as he watches Miles drag a suitcase to a waiting taxi in the courtyard, a dog tight on his heels. Hazel skips after him, a multicolored poncho bouncing on her shoulders, tassels flying.

He crosses his arms across his chest and watches Julie pat the dog’s head and hug Fili, Miles, and Hazel in turn. 

He finds the pack of cigarettes that he had stashed in the bottom of his bag. They had been the source of the last large fight he’d had with his father before boarding the plane. They had been confiscated of course, but Kili had always been good at finding things.

In reality, he didn’t like the way they tasted, but they gave him something to do, something to fidget with. He taps the golden packaging, traces the logo, before pulling one out and lighting it. He uses a dirty cup as an ashtray, which he uses as it slowly burns away and he watches the embers creep closer to his fingers.

This is how Miles finds him.

“Hey. Uh. We’re going swimming before our uncle gets here and makes us do chores and eat vegetables if you want to come?” He is wearing a pink, fluffy cowboy hat on his head.

“I don’t swim.”

“It’s a really special place. You’ll love it. Last chance at fun before the fascist regime arrives.”

Kili makes a noncommittal noise. “Maybe next time.”

Miles sounds disappointed, but not surprised when he leaves.

Kili looks down at the pile of ashes in the cup and back out the window. He has spent all morning and the previous night thinking about what little he knows about current world affairs. It makes him nervous and he had already tidied his room three times. 

_You’ll just keep thinking and cleaning if you stay here._

He sets his jaw, grabs his boots, and heads down to the courtyard.

There he finds Hazel jumping on the trampoline and Miles and Fili stuffing towels and a football into a straw tote.

They all look in his direction when the wooden door bangs against the stone wall.

“Hey!’ Miles grins.

“What? Can’t change my mind?” Kili crosses his arms and stomps forward.

“Oh no! Not him!” Hazel giggles.

“Just because I’m coming doesn’t mean that I’ll be swimming.”

“We’ll see.”

Kili looks at Fili and sees a twinkle in his eyes and a smile that he ducks his head to hide.


	17. Chapter 17

They’re walking through the gate when a crackle, boom, and squealing rush of sound fills the air. It shatters the air, the noise increasing in pitch.

Hazel drops her stuffed animal and runs to Fili, throwing her arms around his waist and hiding her face from the sound.

Miles grins. “Cool.”

Fili’s hands go to his ears and he searches the sky.

Kili follows his gaze.

Five fighter jets rocket over them. So close that Kili can read their tail numbers and see the flags painted on the undersides of their wings. Their draft buffets the landscape.

The trees shiver.

And then they’re gone.

Fili drops a hand to Hazel’s head. “It’s alright, see?”

“Come on, let’s go!” Miles grabs a towel and takes off with Hazel hot on his heels.

Fili moves more slowly. He picks up the tote, but keeps an eye to the sky.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** Blood. Nothing weird, I promise, but the warning feels appropriate.

Peter joins them on the road and he and Miles start an impromptu race after Hazel who has gotten far ahead of them. 

Fili chases them.

Kili maintains a stubborn walk, his boots clomping on the pavement.

Hazel is just slipping through a rusted green gate when Kili catches up to them. Fili had tossed the tote over before vaulting it much to Hazel’s amusement. 

Beyond Fili and Hazel is a field of tall green grass where cows are peacefully grazing.

“Hey, guys!” Kili shouts. “Are those cows?” 

“Cow cheese cows!” Miles shouts back.

Kili leans on the gate; peering into the field.

“Are you coming?” Fili asks.

Kili starts and looks at him. “No,” he says, “I didn’t want to go swimming anyway. I think I’ll just head back to the house.”

Fili looks from Kili to the cows, “Wait a minute.”

Fili sets the tote down and walks towards the sedate black and white beasts. 

“You don’t have to do that!” Kili says anxiously. 

Fili reaches the first cow. His hand strokes over its flank. Cups the fuzzy ear. He whispers to the cow and moves on to the next. 

The cows begin to move away.

Fili comes back to the gate. “Better?”

Kili swallows and nods.

Fili holds out a hand. 

Taking Fili’s hand, Kili scrambles awkwardly over the fence. Once he has both boots firmly planted on the uppermost rung he jumps down in a moment of boldness. 

“Fuck!”

The hand not holding Fili’s had caught on a bit of protruding wire from the fence.

“Let me see.” Fili reaches for Kili’s injured hand that is dripping blood down the side of his hand already.

“It’s fine.” Kili tugs his hand from Fili. He tries to get a look at the cut, but the blood makes it difficult. “Shit.”

“Here.” Fili gently takes Kili’s hand in his own. “Let me.” 

Fili cradles Kili’s hand and peers at the cut. In a second, so quickly that Kili doesn’t have a chance to protest, Fili puts Kili’s bleeding finger to his mouth.

Kili freezes. 

It is such an intimate gesture. It is something Kili’s mother used to do when he was small. He remembers one time when he cut open his palms while playing on a playset. His mother had kissed his scraped hands and told him that “mommy spit” was magic and it would make everything better.”

Fili looks at Kili’s hand again, all blood gone. The action is so practiced and unselfconscious that Kili feels like Fili has done the same thing often for Miles and Hazel. Fili has taken care of them, and he’s taking care of Kili now.

“It’s not deep.” Fili looks up to meet Kili’s startled gaze. “See? The bleeding is already stopping. Do you want a plaster? We can walk back if you do.”

Kili mutely shakes his head.

“Alright. Come alone then.” Fili grins and grabs the tote. It swings from his fingertips from his fingertips as he walks; he whistles a cheerful tune that reminds Kili of the sparrows outside his bedroom window.

This time Kili keeps pace with him.


	19. Chapter 19

“Aren’t you going to swim?” Miles shouts from the banks of the wide, shallow, and slow moving glorified creek of a river.

“Do you know how many germs and bacteria there are in river water?” Kili retorts from his spot on a quilt in the sun a safe distance from the water so as to not get wet.

“Not in this water!” Miles bends down to splash water in Kili’s direction. “C’mon, no one comes here and doesn’t swim!”

Kili shakes his head.

Miles shrugs and dives back into the water. Hazel is busy pretending to be a mermaid and scolding the dogs as they sniff and lick at her face. 

Kili unties his boots and peels his socks off, carefully tucking them inside his boots. He wiggles his toes in the long green grass just off the edge of the blanket. He closes his eyes.

He  _ listens _ .

He  _ feels _ .

“Hey, Kili, come see this!” Peter shouts.

Kili narrows his eyes. “What is it?”

“Just come and see!”

Kili rolls his eyes.

“Hurry! You’re going to miss it!”

Kili exaggeratedly pushes himself to his feet and walks to the rocky outcrop over the river where Peter is standing.

“What?”

“See?” Peter points into the frothing water.

“No. What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“Just there!” Peter insists. 

Kili frowns at the water and looks to where Hazel is flicking leaves into the water to watch them run away. Miles is standing near the shore with a grin on his face. 

When Kili looks back to water about to demand to know what on earth he was supposed to be looking for he sees that Peter has been replaced by Fili.

“You know that you’re allowed to have fun sometimes. You don’t have to follow all those rules.”

“What do you mean?”

Fili’s smile is Kili’s only warning.

Fili catches him around the waist.

They are falling.

They crash into the cool water.

“You fuck!” Kili sputters with laughter once he surfaces. 

Fili’s laughter is all that answers him.

He sends a wave of water in Fili’s direction. Fili returns it.

Hazel jumps on Kili’s back, almost dragging him underwater again. “That’s my brother! You can’t splash him!”

Kili splashes Hazel with water. He gets himself in the process, but she pushes herself off his back, squeals, ducks under the surface, and emerges again near Fili.

Now it is two against one.

Kili is soundly beaten.

But he doesn’t care in the slightest.


	20. Chapter 20

Kili’s wet jeans and t-shirt are spread out on the grass to dry in the sun.

“Here,” Fili offers his green sweater.

“Thanks.”

Kill pulls it over his head and is surrounded by the smell of laundry detergent, sun, and Fili.

He sits cross-legged in a ring around a small fire between Miles and Hazel. Fili is sprawled on the other side of it. His golden hair slowly curls as it dries.

Hazel is flopped on her back picking petals off a flower and singing quietly to herself. 

“You have to try one!” Miles holds out the pointed end of a stick that has a melty, browned marshmallow dripping from the end.

“Do I really?” Kili asks, but he is already reaching out to pluck the marshmallow from the stick before it falls into the trampled grass.

“Really.”

Kili fidgets with the marshmallow for a moment, trying to figure the best way to eat it.

And that is the only thing he is thinking about. He is sitting in grass in his underwear wearing a sweater that had been borrowed without being laundered with the grass tickling his thighs, river water drying in his hair, and he is about to eat a hunk of processed sugar that was cooked over a fire on a stick, and none of these things bother him at that moment. He is dimly aware of what he would normally be doing.

But right now? He is just fine with not being in control.

“You’re right,” he says around a mouthful of marshmallow. “It is actually quite good.”

Miles grins. “Told you!”

“You were right, for once.” Kili concedes. 

He sees Fili roll his eyes and smile.

“What?”

Fili rolls onto his side, head resting on the palm of his hand. “He was also right about swimming.” 

Kili frowns, but it is not a real frown. He tears up a handful of grass and tosses it in Fili’s direction. The wind catches it and blows it all back into Kili’s face.

Fili’s eyes crinkle when he laughs.

Hazel takes the marshmallow stick from Miles and starts instructing Kili on how to best toast marshmallows. Kili only half listens. His eyes keep being drawn to Fili who is stretched out on the grass once again.


	21. Chapter 21

“You’re doing it wrong,” Hazel scolds.

“I think it’s fine,” Kili holds out the flower crown that she was teaching him to make.

“It’s _not,_ ” she takes it from his hands. “Like _this_ ,” she shows him. Kili does not see how what she did is different from what he had been doing.

Kili shrugs.

Hazel rolls her eyes.

“Fili,” she calls. 

Fili stirs from the light nap he’d fallen into. “Yes?”

“Can you show Cousin Kili how to make a flower crown? He’s just dreadful.”

“I’m sure he’s fine.”

“ _No._ He’s _awful,_ ” Hazel pouts. “Come see,” she finishes plaintively. 

Fili smiles and closes his eyes again.

Then they snap open. The air is filled with a cacophony of cries and the flurry of wings as birds of all kinds take off and head in the same direction.

Kili looks to the sky and then to Fili who is now standing.

Fili looks in the opposite direction from where the birds were headed.

Hazel carefully places Kili’s “dreadful” flower crown on his head.

The dogs take off towards the house, the same direction as the birds. Barking.

Hazel picks up the stick to roast another marshmallow.

“What’s up with them?” Kili asks. There is an edge to his voice. He stands and crosses his arms across his chest. Suddenly wishing that he was more dressed, wearing his boots.

It is Miles who answers. “They probably heard Uncle Frerin getting into the house. They can hear it for miles.” He huffs a laugh. “The vegetable fascist regime has arrived.” He pokes at the fire with a stick.

“Uncle Frerin is a vegetable-tarian,” Hazel explains. “And he’s double jointed.”

Kili looks to Fili again.

Fili is still tense, standing, facing south.

A rush of wind comes from the south.

It roars through the fields—an invisible line of force that bows the grasses to the ground.

Branches shatter.

The fire goes out.

Fili takes a step back under its force. Kili hugs himself tighter, fingernails digging into his arms beneath the green sweater.

Miles and Peter look to Fili and they go tense as well. Their expressions nervous.

Then there is a cracking boom so loud that all other sounds are drowned out. They can no longer hear the rushing of the wind. A sound that they feel in their bones.

Hazel makes a distressed noise; her eyes are on her siblings.

Then snow begins to fall.

Kili reaches his hand out and catches one of the flakes.

“It’s ash,” he says quietly. His voice cracking in his dry throat.

  
  



	22. Chapter 22

“What’s happening?” Miles asks uncertainly.

No one answers him.

“I should probably get home,” Peter mutters. He grabs his shoes and takes off across the field.

Everything is quiet again. 

A normal breeze rustles the leaves on the trees and blows ash across the field. A sound that was relaxing moments ago is now ominous.

“It’s snowing,” Hazel says quietly. She brushes the hair back from her face and steps softly on grass that is filling with ash. She scoops up a handful and blows it from her open palms. 

Kili looks to the forest which is obscured by the thickly falling ash. 

Everything is turning gray.

“Get the stuff. We’re going,” Fili orders. Ash falls from his shoulders when he bends to pull his shoes on.

He doesn’t bother to tie them.

“Come on Hazel!” he snaps. “Get your shoes and let’s go.”

The sharpness, the fear, in his voice moves Hazel and Kili to action. Kili tugs on his still wet jeans and ties his boots tightly while Hazel slips on her sandals and poncho. Miles and Fili stuff towels and other supplies into the tote.


	23. Chapter 23

Hazel runs ahead of them, but they are all moving quickly back to the safety of the house.

“Uncle Frerin!” she shouts as she bounces through the gate into the courtyard. Her fear forgotten in her excitement.

She leaves footprints in the ash.

She’s through the open kitchen door and in the house shouting Frerin’s name as she goes.

The house is dark and silent except for the odd lamp.

Fili and Miles drop their bags as soon as they’re through the door.

“I want to see what the TV says,” Miles says. He does not stop moving as he drops his bag and disappears through the doorway.

“Hazel?”

“What’s going on?” Kili asks, wishing that his own voice didn’t shake.

Fili meets Kili’s eyes.

Hazel reappears at Fili’s elbow. 

There are tears in her voice. “Uncle Frerin’s not here. I tried to ring him, but the phone’s not working.” 

“Guys! Come quickly! You have to see this!” Mile yells from the living room. The edge in his voice makes Kili’s stomach wobble.

Fili and Kili share one more look before rushing to the living room.


	24. Chapter 24

Miles stands in front of the television. His arms limp by his sides. His mouth hangs open as he looks at scenes of billow smoke on the screen.

Across the smoke in there are words in red and white.

**BREAKING NEWS: London bomb explosion.**

Kili sits heavily on the sofa. Hazel sits close to him with her leg touching his.

> _“Up to fifteen different groups have claimed responsibility for this attack.”_

The scene of smoke is replaced with one of leaping red flames, black smoke, the silhouettes of firefighters, and screaming.

Kili tugs at the cuffs of the borrowed sweater down over his hands.

> _And, I repeat, we appear to be talking about a nuclear device, that’s right, a dirty bomb_

Fili’s arms are crossed across his chest. His jaw clenches.

> _which has killed tens if not hundreds of thousands of people in and around the capital._

The remote slips from Miles’ hand and cracks on the hardwood floor. No one moves to pick it up.

> _And we’re beginning to hear reports of fallout as far afield as Bristol —_

The power cuts out.

Everything goes dark.

  
  



	25. Chapter 25

They all look to Fili.

“Why did the TV go off? Fili?” Hazel says quietly.

Fili says nothing. He opens the cupboard beside the television and rummages around before rushing down the hallway. Creaks and groans from the house mark his quick movement.

“Where’s mum? We have to get her?” Hazel’s voice wavers.

Miles spins around. “Shut up, Hazel! Stop being such a baby.”

“Hey!” Kili snaps, “She’s scared. It’s scary. She’s allowed to be scared!”

Hazel scoots closer to Kili and leans against him. 

“Powers out the whole house,” Fili says when he reappears. “Miles, go find the torches.”

Miles hops over the back of the couch on his way to the kitchen.

“Fili? What’s a nuclear?” Hazel’s voice is steadier now.

Fili drops onto the couch opposite Kili and Hazel. He starts fidgeting the large object in his hands. “It’s … uh … it’s just a grown-up word that they use on the telly. It doesn’t mean anything.

“Come here,” he pats the seat beside him.

Hazel quickly moves and fits herself under Fili’s arm.

“I’ve got the radio. It might tell us more, yeah?” He smiles at Hazel and presses a kiss to the top of her head.

Kili stands and leans against the doorway with one foot crossed over the other and the sweater pulled close. “How far away is London?”

Their eyes meet.

“Far.” Is all Fili says. He looks back to the radio, fitting batteries into the back. Hazel nestles in to him, one hand on his wrist.

“But we heard it happen! We heard the sound!” Kili’s voice cracks in a way it hasn’t in over a year.

“BOOM!” Miles shouts when he reappears holding the flashlight under his chin.

“Miles!” Fili says sharply.

Miles cackles.

“You’re such a dick!” Kili shoves Miles when Miles passes him to sit on Hazel’s other side.

“This isn’t a game, Miles,” Fili says.

Kili doesn’t hear this. He is already halfway up the stairs on the way to his bedroom.


	26. Chapter 26

The door clicks loudly behind Kili in his silent bedroom. 

He rushes to the sink and washes his hands. The burning ache in his chest eases. He quickly changes into dry clothes. He holds his wet clothes between his forefinger and his thumb and careful hangs them so that they don’t touch him. He hesitates between putting on his own sweatshirt and wearing Fili’s sweater again.

Everything is where it belongs. But he checks again. Adjusts.

He fixes his bed—checking the hospital corners and tugging them straight—and then grabs his phone. Hoping that there is something, anything, and wishes that there was a message from home.

It’s still dead.

And he doesn’t have service anyway.

He drops onto his bed, phone cupped loosely in his hands, and stares out the window.

Dusk has fallen. An orange glow illuminates the horizon. But Kili doesn’t know if it’s the sun.

The world is gray, but the ash has stopped floating down.

A rumble of far distant thunder promises rain.


	27. Chapter 27

The living room glows warmly when Kili returns. Fili has found a kerosene lamp, kerosene and creates a warm, inviting glow.

Static crackles from the radio that is barely tuned to a news station. It snaps in and out and they can barely hear a full word in a row.

“I keep thinking about mum,” Hazel says quietly as Kili slips back into the room.

“She’s in Switzerland,” Miles smiles, “Nothing bad ever happens there. What would they do? Have a war over chocolate?”

Hazel nods and pets the fur of her stuffed bear. “I want to talk to her.”

Fili is leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees. “The phone’s out, remember?”

Hazel sighs and nods again. She hugs her bear tighter and stares at the glow from the lamp.

“Plus,” Miles adds, “She’s probably already on her way home. She probably heard what happened and got on the first plane back.”

“No way. She’ll be back,” Fili assures with a soft smile.

“And she’ll know what to do,” Miles says.

Miles picks up the radio and starts twisting the knob, looking for a better station.

Then a crisp voice comes through clearly. 

> _/ The Government has declared a state of emergency. Do not panic. /_

Kili slides on to the couch next to Miles. 

They stare at the radio.

> _/ Following the detonation of a device at 1700 hours today civil law has been suspended. /_

Kili presses his thighs together and stares at his hands. He feels sick.

> _/ Any civilians found defying martial law will be court martialed. Stay in your homes and await further instructions. /_

Hazel makes a soft distressed noise.

“Hey,” Fili says softly when she climbs into his lamp and curls against him.

> _/ This is a special recorded announcement. /_

The radio goes silent and then starts playing classical music that Kili does not recognize.

  
  



	28. Chapter 28

“It’ll be alright,” Fili says into Hazel’s hair.

“I want mum,” she whispers.

“I know…” Fili says just as quietly. “How about we all sleep in here and get a fire going in the fireplace. It’ll be like the holidays? What do you think about that?” 

Hazel nods.

“Pick out a book and I’ll read it outloud for you.”

Hazel nods again and climbs off of Fili’s lap. She grabs his hand and tugs him along behind her.

“Come on, Kili,” Miles says standing up. “Help me get some blankets from the hall closet.”

Kili follows him dully and they carry piles of afghans in colors that were once popular. 

Hazel comes downstairs holding a worn paperback copy of  _ The Borrowers. _

Once Fili’s lit a small fire in the fireplace and they’ve made up makeshift beds on the couches, an armchair and ottoman for Hazel, and a pile of sleeping bags along the far wall for Miles Fili starts to read. Hazel has wormed her way under his arm again. 

“Chapter One,” Fili begins.

Hazel’s head rests on his chest. Kili sits cross-legged on the couch that will be his bed and Miles continues to listen to the radio with the volume so quiet that it is almost out.

“ ‘It was Mrs. May who first told me about them. No, not me. How could it have been me—a wild, untidy, self-willed little girl who stared with angry eyes and was said to crunch her teeth. Kate, she should have been called. Yes, that was it—Kate. Not that the name matters much either way: she barely comes into the story,’ ” Fili reads.

Kili listens, but he does not really pay attention. He looks into the fire. Fili’s voice is a pleasant hum in the background punctuated by a spat of static from the radio every so often. Time becomes slippery.

When Kili comes back to himself Fili has stopped reading and Hazel is tucked into the chair-cum-bed. Kili rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck. When he does he sees Fili standing next to one of the windows. 

Fili’s elbow rests against the window frame. His hand is fisted in his hair. His jaw clenches. 

Kili could almost swear that he sees unshed tears in Fili’s eyes, but he cannot be certain with the dim flickering lights.

  
  



	29. Chapter 29

Kili does not sleep well. He tosses and turns on the couch struggling to get comfortable and to ignore the sounds of three other sleeping people. He has never shared a room.

Sometime before dawn he wakes and after some huffing and flipping over he gives up and looks around the room.

Miles is sprawled on the sleeping bags. His mouth is open and he is snoring. 

Hazel’s “bed” is empty.

When he looks across the coffee table to Fili he sees her curled up on the couch with Fili. He is lying on his back with one arm thrown over his head and the other hooked around Hazel’s thin shoulders, keeping her close. 

All the worried lines that Kili had seen only hours before have been smoothed away.

Kili rolls onto his side to face Fili. He hugs a pillow to his chest, burrowing in, and tries to sleep again.

  
  



	30. Chapter 30

When Kili wakes again the room is still dark. 

“Are you awake?” Fili whispers in Kili’s ear. 

Kili shivers and tugs his blanket over his head, the crochet stitches stretch with his movement. He groans.

“Come on,” Fili gives Kili’s shoulder a gentle shake. “I want to show you something. 

Kili lowers his blanket. “What do you want to show me?”

Fili holds a finger to his lips. Miles and Hazel are still sleeping. Hazel has been rolled up in a blanket and occupies the couch opposite Kili.

Kili tightens the laces on his boots and follows Fili though the hall, the kitchen, and out the door into the courtyard. Fili crosses the courtyard. 

The rain from the night before has washed all of the ash away. The world looks normal. It looks the same way that it did the day before. Everything is still gray and monochrome in the pre-dawn light. 

Kili hesitates just outside the kitchen door. “The radio said to stay home.”

Fili turns. “The woods are home,” he says with a smile.

He starts walking again. Kili hesitates just another a moment before jogging to catch up with Fili.

“Where are we going?”

Fili shakes his head. “It’s a surprise.”

Kili wraps his arms around his chest. The morning is misty and cool. He follows Fili without any more questions.

They leave the trees behind and climb a hill. The world is becoming lighter.

“Here.” Fili says when they reach the top of the hill. He sits down with his legs stretched out in front of him.

“There’s nothing here.” Kili looks around. 

Fili looks up with an amused expression, “You’ll see.” He pats the ground next to him. “Sit.”

Kili sits. “It’s wet,” he grumbles.

Fili smiles and looks back to the landscape in front of them. 

Kili shifts and fidgets next to Fili’s calm silence.

“See,” Fili says softly.

Kili looks to him and then follows the direction of Fili’s head nod. 

On the horizon there is a strip of pink. It spreads into a broad band of gold surrounded by purples, pinks, and blues. Then the sun breaks the line of the horizon.

They watch the sun climb higher in silence.

Fili stands and wipes off the seat of his pants.

“I thought that it would be nice to be reminded that the world is still beautiful,” Fili says in answer to Kili’s unasked question. 

  
  



	31. Chapter 31

They walk back to the house in silence. The sun quickly burns off the mist as they walk through the damp grass that is waist-high in places.

“Fili?” Kili says before they reach the courtyard.

Fili stops walking and turns.

“Are we…” Kili pauses. “Are we all going to be okay?”

Fili does not give Kili the answer that he would give Hazel or Miles. His eyes are sad.

Kili opens his mouth to apologize; he hadn’t meant to ruin the bubble of calm that they had been in until he opened his mouth. 

“I don’t know,” Fili says quietly looking towards the house with its dark windows.

Kili looks down, wishing he hadn’t spoken, wishing he hadn’t asked. He fidgets with the hem of his shirt. The thin material rolls between his fingertips and springs back when released. He takes a deep breath. “I mean… Are we prepared or something…” he trails off.

Fili walks back to Kili. “We are,” he touches Kili’s arm. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

Kili walks beside Fili as they pass the house and approach one of the outbuildings. This one is stone with a roof that has seen better days. Inside it smells of dust and hay. In a corner there is old, rusting farm equipment. The walls are also covered with tools that were once identifiable. 

“There’s nothing here?” 

“That’s the point.”

Fili pushes a canvas tarp aside with the toe of his boot. He leans forward so that his weight is on the ball of his foot. The floor creaks quietly beneath him.

“Here,” he says. He plucks a crowbar from the wall and fits one end between two of the floorboards.

A panel separates from the rest of the floor revealing a ladder descending into what smelled like an earth-walled cellar.

Kili peeks over the edge. “What is it?”

“Paranoia,” Fili says with a smile. “Or, not really paranoia now, because it actually happened.”

Fili descends the ladder into the darkness. There is a click and a flashlight reveals something far less ominous than Kili was imagining.

Kili frowns when he reaches the bottom of the wooden ladder, “I don’t understand.”

“Mum’s grandparents never really got over rationing during the second world war. They were scared it would happen again. And then there was the Cold War with Russia and the US, so I suppose it made sense. And then with Mum’s job,” he shrugs. “It’s just always been maintained.”

Kili runs his fingers over cans of food that line the shelves of the cellar. 

“We’ll be okay for a while if we can’t go to the shops or anything. And there’s the garden. Fish, and all that.”

Kili nods. Some of his worries have been assuaged, but he sees in Fili’s face that he’s not as confident as he is trying to appear.


	32. Chapter 32

“Where are you going?” Hazel whines and clings to the leg of Fili’s shorts.

Fili gently pries her hands away. “Just to Uncle Frerin’s house and to the village.”

“Can I come? Please?” 

Fili catches her hands in his own. He drops down to her level. “I want you to stay here.” He runs his hands over her arms from her shoulders down to her hands, soothing her. “Play with Toki and Jeb. And we’ll be back before you know it.”

“Will you bring me any chocolates?” she asks hopefully, worry already disappearing.

Fili’s mouth twists in amusement, “I’ll see what I can do. Maybe that will be Kili’s job.” He looks over his shoulder at Kili who is standing beside a bike that has more rust than Kili thinks is safe.

Fili winks at Hazel who giggles. Fili gives her a quick hug and she wanders off calling for the dogs. 

“Keep her here,” Fili says solemnly to Miles.

“She doesn’t listen to me,” Miles says. He looks less than pleased about the role he’s being given. 

“You both need to stay near the house until we know what’s going on.”

Miles shrugs and then nods his head. “I’ll try.”

“No one should go anywhere alone.”

Kili scraps boot from one of his boots with his other foot.

“I’ll be back soon.”

Fili takes his bike by the handlebars and smoothly pushes the bike into motion and swings his other leg over. 

“Where does your uncle live?”

“A few kilometers from here on the other side of the village.” 

They ride in silence. 

Kili watches for signs of war, for signs of martial law, signs of a nuclear explosion. Everything is quiet. They pass the field with cows peacefully grazing and another with sheep being corralled by a sheepdog with the farmer standing off in the distance. His shouts of “lie down” and “come by” barely audible from the rutted narrow road with its overhanging branches. 

The day is warm with a light breeze—a perfect July day. 


	33. Chapter 33

When they reach the outskirts of the village there are finally signs of discord.

A car is pulled off the road and is nose down in a ditch. 

The streets are almost empty.

The people who are out have worried expressions as they hurry along, heads down.

Fili dismounts. 

Kili sticks close by, closer than he would normally. 

There is a murmur, a rumble, of voices as they approach the high street.

Fili pauses, seems to steel himself, and rounds the corner.

The street is crowded with people. They are shoving their way through the crowd trying to get into the grocers. There is shouting, screaming, children are crying. 

Kili freezes. He feels like he was dunked in an ice bath. 

It all becomes real again. 

“I don’t think we’re going to learn anything here,” Fili says quietly. 

  
  



	34. Chapter 34

The roads to Frerin’s house are just as empty as the ones before the village. Kili shudders when he thinks of the mad crush of people. The fear that rolled off of them like a wave, like a disease, that permeated every crevice, every alley, every home.

“This is it.” 

Fili leans his bike against the wooden fence. The small detached cottage is set back from the road. The front yard is filled with raised garden beds.

There is no answer when Fili knocks. Fili walks around the house to the shed behind the house. There is no one. 

He knocks on the back door. 

“Uncle Frerin?” Fili calls.

Fili steps into the kitchen with its tiled floor, its yellow Aga, and its cheery curtains. Kili is close behind him, almost touching, scared to be left alone in a world that is so familiar, but has the biting edge of chaos lingering just out of sight.

“He’s not here,” Fili says quietly.

Kili’s gaze flicks to Fili and then to the rest of the kitchen. “What about the rest of the house?”

Fili shakes his head.

“He keeps things neat. Look,” he points to the table by a window that overlooks the backyard and swaying sunflowers and aster, “He’s left dishes on the table. He’d never do that.”

“What do you think happened?” Kili asks quietly.

“I don’t know.” Fili drops into one of the chairs at the small dining table. 

Kili remains standing. He walks to the otherside of the room and peeks into the rest of the small house. He can see the living room, part of the bedroom, the front door, and another door that probably leads to a bathroom from where he stands. Everything is dark and quiet.

He turns back to look at Fili who is looking out the window. The sun lays sharply across Fili’s face, throwing it into relief. 

“My other uncle is in the military… maybe…,” Fili starts to say. His voice is so quiet that Kili is sure that Fili is talking to himself. “I just don’t know.” He drops his face into his hands and scrubs roughly at his face before running his hands through his hair to grip his neck while he stares at his lap.

“I had hoped he would be here,” he says softly. “That he had just gotten caught up with something.”

Fili stands. “Let’s go. Hazel and Miles will be waiting.”

Kili walks behind Fili. He starts to reach out for Fili’s shoulder, to comfort him, to reassure him, the way that he has been supporting them all so far. But he draws his hand back and stuff both hands into the pockets of his jeans. He watches the dust stir in the wake of Fili’s boots and his own.


	35. Chapter 35

The sun sets without any news.

The announcements on the radio are the same. 

While Fili is reading another chapter of  _ The Borrowers  _ to Hazel Kili slips outside with his cigarettes and lighter in hand. He drops heavily onto the wall and looks up at the streak of stars. It is the first time that he has been alone all day. Hazel alternates between clinging to Fili or himself and carefree laughter.

His breath shudders and his whole chest quakes. 

He wishes he could forget it all for just a minute. 

His hands shake when he lights a cigarette. 

The moments of silence are the worst. He starts thinking about everything and it spirals out of control until he is clenching his fists so hard that they ache and he starts straightening everything around him.

He takes a drag. His breath still shakes. It catches on an exhale and he feels for a moment like he is about to burst into tears. His chest is tight and his thoughts are crushing him.

He  _ wants… _

He doesn’t know. 

His chest burns.

His body aches. 

Nothing he can do will change anything. And he wants to fix it.

He chokes on  _ everything. _


	36. Chapter 36

When the kitchen door clatters against the frame Kili’s cigarette has burned so low that it has almost reached his fingers. 

Fili’s hair is silver in the starlight. 

He reaches out and plucks the cigarette from Kili’s fingers and crushes it on the cobblestones of the courtyard. 

Kili’s hand falls into his lap and Fili sits on the wall beside him.

“I’m sorry,” Kili says quietly.

“For what?” Fili’s eyes are soft and confused. In the moonlight they look like bottomless pools.

Kili takes a deep breath that catches. He wishes he could crawl into Fili’s lap like Hazel does—to hide his face away and for the world to be brighter and alright when he emerges.

“I…” Kili tugs the cuffs of his sweatshirt over his hands and crosses his arms. “It’s my fault,” he breathes. His voice is so low that he’s not even sure that he actually says the words or if he just thinks them.

He starts to speak again, but he freezes when Fili’s hand finds his own hand. The warm weight of Fili’s palm on the back of his hand grounds Kili and quiets his thoughts.

Fili takes a deep breath, “This isn’t your fault. There’s nothing you or I could have …” 

Kili cuts him off. “Bad things  _ always _ happen around me.” He speaks so quietly that Fili has to lean close to hear. “I’m a curse.”

“You’re not a curse, Kili. I’m glad that you’re here.” Fili’s voice is tight. 

Kili closes his eyes.

“I am though,” Kili says. “I’m the reason my mother’s dead.”

Fili’s hand tightens on his, calluses press into Kili’s hand, but he says nothing.

“If it weren’t for me she would probably still be alive.” Kil clenches his eyes shut. “I’m the one who insisted on going to the store that day even though it was raining. We fought about it and I yelled until she said she’d take me.” His breath catches. “It was just a stupid pair of jeans. I…” His voice breaks and he leans his head on Fili’s shoulder.

Fili links his fingers between Kili’s. With his free hand Fili cradles the back of Kili’s head and holds him close. His fingers tighten when sobs begin to shake Kili’s body.

“It’s not your fault,” Fili says quietly.

Kili presses closer. Fili holds him tight and keeps murmuring quietly without letting him go.


	37. Chapter 37

The next night the radio stopped working and they cooked potatoes in the hot coals of the fire.

“I don’t know if the war is real,” Peter says tearing open the foil around his potato.

Kili and Fili share a look. Kili remembers what he saw in town. He remembers what he learned about nuclear bombs in school.

“My dad says that it is a load of rubbish to confuse people,” Peter continues.

Miles looks intrigued. “Who would lie about a war?”

“The government,” Peter says simply with his mouth full of potato.

“Why would they do that?” Fili says quietly. His tone makes it clear that he’s not really asking a question, but Peter continues.

“So that no one notices what they’re doing!”

Fili shakes his head.

  
  



	38. Chapter 38

“New Zealand looks like a nice place to live,” Hazel says, flipping through a book of photographs of the world. 

“But it’s all surrounded by water, you couldn’t go anywhere,” Miles points out. 

“But I like the water.

“Fili?”

Fili looks up from his book, “Hm?”

“Where’s Switzerland?”

Fili sets his book aside. “It’s not that far away.” He leans forward with his elbows on his knees. He reaches for the atlas that Miles had been looking at earlier and opens it to a map of Europe. “See? It’s right here.” He points.

“And we’re here,” Hazel points to England.

Fili nods.

“They seem like they’re awfully far apart,” Hazel says. Tears are threatening in her voice.

“Mum could drive!” Miles jumps in. “If she couldn’t take a plane then she’d get a car and she would drive.”

“Driving would take longer than flying, but it really isn’t that far,” Fili confirms.

Fili closes the atlas, “How about we play Go Fish?”


	39. Chapter 39

“Do you have a black five?” Kili asks without looking up from his hand.

Fili smirks. “Go fish.”

“Stupid game,” Kili grumbles and adds yet another card to his sizeable hand; it matches none that he already has.

“Do you have a red queen?” Fili asks Hazel.

“You’re cheating,” Hazel accuses

“What?” Fili looks offended. “How.”

Hazel narrows her eyes. “You’re looking into my mind like.”

“That’s impossible,” Miles says from his spot at the coffee table where he is looking through the atlas again.

“Is so!” Hazel protests. “Fili’s doing it!”

“Do you have the card?” Fili asks.

“Yes.” Hazel smacks the card down on the table and rattles the cups that are sitting there. She carefully moves her cards around in her hand.

“It’s your turn,” Fili prompts.

“I know! I was trying to look into Cousin Kili’s mind!” 

“You wouldn’t want to do that. I don’t have anything interesting in my head,” Kili teases.

Kili catches Fili looking at him with a soft expression on his face. Kili flushes and looks away.

“What card do you want?” he asks.

“Do you have a red three?”

“Yes,” Kili hands the card over and Hazel lays down a matched pair on the table in front of her.

Fili leans forward and counts her matches in an exaggerated way, “ How come you’re winning when I’m the one who is supposed to be cheating ?” 

Hazel sticks her tongue out. “Because you are.”

  
  



	40. Chapter 40

Kili slips outside again and sits on the wall. The quiet calms the chaos that he feels rising in his chest. It comes less now than it did back home, but it still makes him fidget and straighten everything around him, because maybe if everything is perfect then nothing bad will happen.

He keeps his eyes on the sky just above the treeline even when he hears the sound of Fili’s bare feet on the stone of the courtyard. 

“I used to know a ton of constellations when I was little,” Kili says when Fili joins him on the wall. “My mom bought me tons of books about them.”

Fili nods, but says nothing.

“My favorite was Perseus and Cassiopeia,” Kili points to the distinctive “w” of Cassiopeia above the trees. 

Fili sits quietly and leans against the pillar of the gate.

Kili swings his feet and the soft heels of his boots bounce off the stone. He looks to Fili whose eyes are fixed on t he sky. His expression is unreadable. 

He does not move away when Kili reaches out and touches his hand. Kili looks to Fili’s face, but his expression does not change. 

Kili pulls his hand away.

“Don’t.”

Kili puts his hand back; his palms rests on the back of Fili’s hand where Kili can feel the ridges of his knuckles. This time he notes the tension in Fili’s hands, the tightness of his jaw.

They sit in silence and watch the moon rise.


	41. Chapter 41

The moon shrinks as it rises higher.

Fili sighs and shifts. He pulls his hand from beneath Kili’s.

Kili leaves his hand resting on the stone wall.

“I don’t know if I’m doing enough,” Fili says.

“What?”

“For them,” he gestures in the direction of the dark house where Miles and Hazel are sleeping. “I don’t know if I’m doing enough, or if I’m doing anything right at all.”

Kili looks to the house, too. “I think you’re doing a great job. Better than my dad would be doing. Miles better than how I’d be doing even if I only had myself to take care of.”

Fili does not reply.

Kili scoots along the wall so that they are sitting close to each other. His shoulder brushes Fili’s and their knees touch. Fili’s shoulders are slumped. Kili reaches out; his fingers find Fili’s knee. “I really do think that you’re doing a great job.”

Fili looks up through his eyelashes at Kili. “Really?”

Kili nods.

Fili raises his head the rest of the way.

Their noses are almost touching.

Kili’s chest  _ squeezes.  _ He feels Fili’s breath ghost across his face, his lips. He could swear that he stops breathing.

Fili’s smile is small. 

Fili cups Kili’s check in his palm. He traces Kili’s cheekbone with his thumb. 

Every second lasts an eternity and every minute is gone in the blink of an eye.

This kiss is just a brushing of lips, but Kili wants to curl into Fili, he wants it to last forever. He smells the shampoo that Fili uses, his soap, and the warm scent of his skin.

_ Is this what kisses are supposed to feel like? _

Fili starts to pull back, his hand falling away. “Sor—”

Kili closes the gap between them before Fili can finish speaking. 


	42. Chapter 42

Kili would have you know that he has kissed people before, plenty of people.

But none of those kisses were like this.

A few weekends before he was sent away he had gone to a party. There had been drinking and games. He had managed to escape Spin the Bottle, but his friends had pressured him into Seven Minutes in Heaven.

He found himself in a closet that smelled like leather shoes and dust with Janey Evans. 

It had tasted like alcohol, cigarettes, and lipstick. 

Kili had pulled away and her hands had gone to his belt.

“No, you don’t have to,” he had protested.

She frowned up at him from the floor.

“I—” he started, but trailed off. “You’re nice, but…”

“You want to be in love or something?” she had laughed.

Kili flushed and stepped back as far as he could, but he was tripping on discarded shoes and fur coats. 

“You do,” she said quietly. She stood, “That’s sweet. You’re a romantic. Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”

None of the other kisses had been much different. They had all been fumbling and tasted of illegal alcohol, and the thrill of doing something naughty. 

But none of them made Kili _burn_ like this. His blood pounds in his ears and all he can feel is Fili’s lips against his own. 

He doesn’t want to do anything except kiss Fili for the rest of his life.


	43. Chapter 43

A car pulls into the courtyard while they are eating breakfast, well, Hazel and Miles are eating, Kili is not. He picks at a slice of toast.

“Is it mum?” Hazel jumps up from her seat turning it over and spilling her orange juice that Fili insisted that she drink.

Fili moves faster and is in the doorway before Hazel can reach it.

“Fili?” Hazel pesters and pulls at him trying to move him away from the door.

“It’s not mum,” Fili answers. “Stay inside.”

Hazel follows Fili outside anyway. 

Kili watches from the doorway.

The car is black and covered with dirt. The man who gets out of the driver’s seat looks harried. His short brown hair sticks up at odd angles and his suit is rumpled. He reaches back in the car for a briefcase.

“Can I help you?” Fili demands.

“Yes,” the man fumbles with the clasp on his bag. He pulls a sheet of paper free. “Is a Keil Matthew Schmidt staying here?”

“Why?”

The man seems to realize that he’s talking to a kid; he draws himself and tries to look official. “Is there someone by that name here? This is the address that he provided on his entry visa.”

Fili does not answer for a minute.

“Yes.”


	44. Chapter 44

Kili is perched on the sofa across from the man. Blankets and pillows were hastily pushed away.

“It would be best if we talked in private.”

Kili looks over his shoulder where Miles, Hazel, and Fili hover just inside the door. “It’s fine. They’re my cousins.”

“Still.”

Kili clenches his hands together. “I’ll tell you what he says later,” Kili says, he does not meet his cousins’ eyes.

Fili is the last to leave. The door shuts firmly behind him. 

“I am John Reynolds. I work for the American Embassy in Edinburgh. We are in the process of getting U.S. citizens to return home.”

“Why?”

Reynolds looks surprised. He clearly was not expecting any questions. “To keep American citizens safe.”

Kili nods, but says nothing.

“As I was saying we are making sure that Americans can safely return home. You are an American citizen, correct?”

Kili nods.

“Can you give me your full name and your date of birth?”

“Keil Matthew Schmidt. September 9, 20**.”

“Place of birth?”

“New York City.”

“Parents?”

“Matthew Aaron Schmidt and, uh, Virginia Noel Oaks.” Kili picks at a loose thread on his jeans.

The man looks at his paper. “Virginia Oaks is deceased, correct?”

Kili clenches his fists. “Yes,” he bites out.”

“Okay,” Reynolds pulls papers from his bag. “These are very important,” he says laying them on the coffee table, “If you lose them they cannot be replaced.”

“What are they?”

“On Friday, at 9am in the village there will be a bus. You will show them this,” he taps a red placard. “The bus will take you to an airport. Once there you will show them this one,” he holds up a green card, “and that will allow you to get on a plane heading to New York City.”

“Your parents have already been informed and they will pick you up when you land.”

Kili touches the papers. They’re a way out. A way home.

He looks past Reynolds where he can see Hazel twirling with a stuffed animal in the courtyard, a flower tucked into her hair. 

“What about my cousins?”

“If they’re not U.S. citizens I can’t do anything for them.”


	45. Chapter 45

“Hey, kid,” Reynolds says when he nearly runs into Fili who is standing just outside the kitchen door. “Thanks for all of your help.”

Fili nods.

“Hey,” he calls after Reynolds.

Reynolds turns from where he is opening his car door.

“Can you tell us what is going on out there?”

Reynolds runs a hand through his hair and tosses his briefcase into the passenger’s seat. “They’re going to start an evacuation of this area any day now. They’ll move you to a more secure location where you’ll be safe. Just,” he looks to the grounds and the garden where Miles and Hazel are playing a game of tag, “stay inside.”

“But what is happening?” Fili raises his voice.

Reynolds gets in his car and slams the door. The car rumbles to life.

“Hey! What is going on?!” Fili shouts at Reynolds’ retreating vehicle.

  
  



	46. Chapter 46

Kili finds Fili behind the house later. An axe slides through Fili’s hands as he chops wood and piles it neatly by the backdoor. Sweat soaks his shirt.

The axe thuds and Kili winces.

“He gave me papers that will get me home,” Kili says softly.

“That’s good,” Fili positions another log, grabs the axe, and there is another thud as the log splits.

Kili’s stomach clenches in a sinking feeling.

“I don’t know if I want to go. I—” Kili starts to say.

Fili’s head snaps in Kili’s direction. “Of course you’re going.”

Kili’s wavering resolve, his desire to stay, wilts under the ferocity of Fili’s gaze. He fingers the edges of the papers that Reynolds had given him. “But…”

Fili leans the axe against the house. He steps close and takes Kili’s shoulders in his hands. His expression softens. “Of course you’re going home. You can get away from all of this. You can be _safe._ ”

Kili looks away from Fili’s steady gaze. “But what about you guys? What will happen here?”

Fili’s hands drop away and he turns back to his task. “Reynolds said that they’re going to start evacuations soon. We’ll be fine.”

“But, I—” Kili starts, but he is interrupted by Hazel skipping around the corner with a goat in tow.

“Cousin Kili! What did that man want?”

Before Kili can answer Fili speaks for him.

“Kili is going home.”

“Aw,” Hazel’s face falls. “That’s too bad. You didn’t even get to see everything.” Her face brightens when a thought occurs to her. “Come on,” She slips her hand into his. “I have to show you the chickens before you leave.”

Kili follows her, but he keeps looking over his shoulder to where Fili stands, shoulders sagging under an unseen weight.


	47. Chapter 47

“Where are we going, Fili?” Hazel asks as she tucks her bear into the wagon.

“There’s the lambing barn in the back field, we’re going to stay there.”

“Like an adventure!” she says.

FIli smiles, “Yes. Just like an adventure.”

“Can we pretend that we’re Robin Hood and that we’re hiding from the Sheriff and his goons?”

“Are you going to be Robin Hood?”

“Of course, silly,” Hazel giggles.

“Can I be Little John then?” Fili asks while he checks the items in the wagon again. They have clothing and enough food for a few days, with plans to come back and get more when needed.

“You’re not big enough,” Hazel says simply.

Fili widens his eyes, “I’m bigger than you.”

“But that’s not big enough.”

“Who will I be then?”

“I will have to think about it,” Hazel replies primly. 

Kili tugs at the straps of his backpack. It’s Tuesday. Fili has avoided him since the embassy employee showed up on Monday morning. “Where’s Miles?”

Fili does not look up. “I sent him and Peter out there already to try and clean up a little and to make sure that there are no racoons living in the loft.”

Kili tries for a lighthearted smile, “I’m sure they liked that.”

“Not at all.”

Kili shuffles his boots. “Fili…” he reaches for Fili’s hand. 

Fili steps away under the pretense of checking over his shoulder to see where Hazel was.


	48. Chapter 48

“Watch out,” Miles shouts up to Hazel as he flings an armful of blankets into the loft. One doesn’t quite make it and falls back down to the floor. “Oops.” He scoops it up and throws again. 

Hazel picks it up and drags it to a corner filled with hay and smooths it out. “You’re going to sleep up here with me, Miles.” 

“Okay,” Miles says, tossing up his backpack.

“Cousin Kili.”

Kili looks up from where he is carefully placing the food into a storage bin that he had finished cleaning out. “Yeah?”

“Since you’re only staying a few nights you have to sleep there,” she points to a spot on the main floor. “It’s the worst spot.”

Kili’s heart twists. He wants to say that he’s staying, but he doesn’t want to lie to her. He wants to stay, but he wants to be safe, too. He doesn’t want to have to worry all the time.

He looks to Hazel and Miles who are bickering back and forth in the loft over how the blankets should be laid out. And he knows that if he leaves he’ll still worry all the time. 

  
  



	49. Chapter 49

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I accidentally didn't post Chapter 47. It's there now.

“Can we make the fire bigger, Fili?” Hazel asks as it gets darker. She looks nervously over her shoulder at the woods that the lambing barn is nestled up to. She is seated between Fili’s legs on the ground.

“Of course, but you should know that nothing out there can hurt you,” Fili says and runs his hands over her hair.

“I know…” she says slowly. She looks at the woods again, “But I am a little scared.”

Peter makes a wolf howl and Miles laughs. 

“That’s not nice,” Hazel snaps. 

Kili looks up from where he is picking grass from the ground.

Miles and Peter are laughing together and Hazel, once she adds another log to the fire, sits back down in front of Fili and leans back against his chest. 

Kili pulls up another handful of grass.

“Can you tell us a story?” Hazel asks.

Fili hums and rests his chin on the top of her head. “What kind of story?”

“The true kind!” Miles says.

“One with a happy ending!” Hazel say at the same time. 

“Mine’s better,” Hazel retorts when Miles repeats his request. 

“Is not,” Peter replies. “Real stories are always the best.” Jeb barks as if he agrees with Peter.

Hazel tilts her head back to look up at Fili. “Can you tell one that has a happy ending,  _ please _ ?” 

“She always gets what she wants,” Miles protests.

“Because she’s the baby,” Peter adds.

Hazel ignores them, “Please, Fili?”

Fili frowns, thinking, before saying, “How about a story that is both?”

“I guess that’ll do,” Miles grumbles. “As long as it is really real.”

“It’s definitely real,” Fili assures him.

“And it’s not sad?”

Fili shakes his head, “It ends well.”

“Then that’s good,” Hazel says, settling back and resting her back against Fili’s chest.

Fili’s eyes flash gold in the firelight and his hair looks like it is aflame.

Kili shivers. 

Fili takes a deep breath and begins.


	50. Chapter 50

“Back when our grandparents were young there was another war. There was a war before that called the Great War, and they thought that that war would be the ‘War to End All Wars.’ They thought they hoped that it would be the last war they ever fought.

“They were wrong.

“Less than thirty years later they were in the middle of another great war. A war that involved the entire world.”

Hazel nestles in deeper against Fili.

“England was involved in this war, as was France, Germany, the Netherlands, and many others. And Germany was our enemy.

This was very bad because Germany had a very good army. They were winning every battle that they fought. They were beating us at every turn.”

Kili pulls the cuffs of Fili’s sweater down over his hands and pulls his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. He’s not so sure that he likes this story. 

“Our troops were retreating,” Fili continues. He stares into the fire as he speaks and even Peter and Miles’ unceasing movement has stilled. “They were trapped by German soldiers and airplanes on a beach in northern France called  Dunkerque. These soldiers had no way out.

“But do you know what happened?” 

Hazel shakes her head.

“All of them were saved. They were rescued from that beach. Navy ships showed up; that’s there job, but other people showed up, too. People with little boats, fishing boats, people who liked to sail on the weekends, but were farmers or bankers during the week. They took their boats to France to save all of the men trapped there. They were bombed, and some of them died, but they did a very great thing. A heroic thing.”

“Did Germany win the war?” Hazel asked after a long moment of silence. 

“No, they lost,” Fili says quietly, “But it took another four years.”

“That’s a very long time,” Hazel says. “I would be thirteen if this war lasts that long.”

Fili nods and there is a far away look in his eyes.

“But we won!” Miles says. “And we’ll win this war, too. Right, Fili?” 

Fili meets Kili’s gaze across the fire. 

Before Fili can answer though, Miles is talking about the airplanes that fought in the war. His bedroom in the house has airplanes hanging from the ceiling. “I probably have a model of the planes that bombed Dunkirk.”

“Did everything ever go back to like it was before,” Hazel asks so quietly that Kili can barely hear her.

Fili nods and wraps his arms around Hazel and pulls her close. “It did. Everything went back to normal.”


	51. Chapter 51

Friday morning comes too fast. Kili wakes up looking at Fili’s bare shoulders against the hay of the makeshift bed. The sun on the stone walls keeps the building warm even as the temperature drops overnight.

Kili does not move. 

If he does not move, then maybe no one will wake up. And the morning will just slip by and he will still be here. 

He does not want to leave. 

A short while later Fili stirs. He says nothing to Kili, but Kili can see the tightness around his eyes and the set of his shoulders. 

Dust motes glitter in the thin streaks of sunlight leaking in. 

Hazel sticks her head over the edge of the loft. “Fili?”

“I’m going to walk Kili to the village to catch his bus. Come down and say goodbye.”

So that is that. 

It is happening.

Kili clambers to his feet and pulls his jeans and boots on. He carefully folds the sweater he had borrowed from Fili and places it on Fili’s pillow.

“Ready?” Fili asks him.

Kili nods. He gives Hazel a hug and Miles insists on some sort of complicated handshake that involves an explosion.

“Stay here.” Fili kisses the top of Hazel’s head. “I’ll be back soon.”

Kili follows Fili back to the house to take the road into the village.

“Goodbye, Cousin Kili!” Hazel shouts and waves.

Kili raises a hand, but he cannot say anything around the lump in his throat. 

Neither of them say anything on the long walk. Fili walks in front with his hands stuffed in his pockets. 

Everything is still as it was. It is quiet and everything is green, peaceful.

And it makes Kili feel worse. He drags his feet. Tries to absorb as much as he can. 

When the outskirts of the village are in sight Kili stops.

Fili turns after a few steps. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t want to go,” Kili says quietly. “Fili, I want to stay.”

Fili walks back to Kili and takes his hand. “You have to go.” Fili squeezes his hand. “If you go home you’ll be safe.”

“I know, but I don’t want to go.”

Fili takes both of Kili’s hands in his own. “Promise me that you will get on that bus, that you will get on that plane, and that you will go home.”

Kili says nothing.

“Come on. We’ll be late.” Fili keeps hold of Kili’s hand and pulls him along.

They reach the one bus stop in the village. Another American is standing there surrounded by suitcases and fingering her tickets.

“Well, this is it,” Fili says roughly.

Kili shakes his head. 

“Kili?”

Kili does not look up from his boots.

“Please look at me,” Fili whispers.

His voice makes Kili’s chest ache. He feels sick. He looks up to meet Fili’s eyes. 

Fili gives Kili’s hands a squeeze. “You’ll be safe.”

Kili barely manages to get his words out. “What about you?”

“We’ll be okay.”

Kili nods and looks back at his boots. Tears burn his eyes. “Do you,” he chokes out, “do you think we’ll ever see each other again?”

“Of course, we will,” Fili says gently. “When this is all over.”

Fili pulls Kili into a tight hug that is over all too quickly. Kili tries to memorize the feel of Fili’s hair against his cheek, his smell, _just in case._

Kili feels numb as he watches Fili walk away.

  
  



	52. Chapter 52

Kili watches until he can no longer see Fili.

The woman tries to start up a conversation. Kili just scowls at her and digs the toe of his boot into the crack in the pavement. She quickly gives up and goes back to looking down the road. Looking for the bus that will take them to an airport and away from here. 

He jams the rubber toe of his boot into the crack, viciously killing a bit of green that had been growing there. He thinks about what is waiting for him back home. It will be just the same as it had been, but now, it’ll be so much worse because he will know how he could be living. 

The bus pulls around the corner.

The woman excitedly grabs her bags and waves at the bus.

Kil rolls his eyes. And mutters, “It’s not like it’s here for you or anything.”

She hands over her ticket chattering excitedly with the driver.

“Boy!”

Kili looks up to the driver.

“Are you getting on this bus?” 

Kili looks at the bus and then down the road.

He shakes his head.

“Are you sure? Are you waiting for a different one?”

Kili straightens his shoulders. The weight of the tickets in his back pocket scolds him. Fili’s voice tells him to get on the bus. 

“No,” he says firmly. “I’m not getting on the bus. I’m going home.”


	53. Chapter 53

He does not go back right away. 

He watches the bus pull away. 

The smell of ozone washes over him and he clenches his fists.

_ “That was it,”  _ he tells himself,  _ There goes your only way out of this.” _

For a moment he considers running after the bus, but that feeling quickly passes. He looks in the direction of home. It occurs to him that Fili will not be well pleased by this.

He sits on a bench and folds over resting his head on his forearms. 

_ “What if he won’t let me come back?”  _

He scolds himself. Of course, Fili will let him come back. It’s not like he has anywhere else he can go.  _ But… _

Kili feels like he did back home when he had broken some rule and knew that he was going home to be punished. It has the same sickening blend of certainty at anger and disappointment and uncertainty at how events will unfold.

He does not know how long he sits there. But when he stands the sun is low in the sky. He hoists his duffle over his shoulder and starts walking.

He slows when he reaches the narrow lain with overhanging trees that will take him to the house. He does not stop. 

He sees no one as he approaches the lambing barn. 

“Fili? Miles?” he calls, pushing open the door into the dim interior.

No one is there. 

Kili drops his bag and kicks off his boots. He notices that the sweater he had carefully folded is gone. 

He goes back outside and sits down where they had the fire the night before. There is a pile of ash and when Kili holds his hand over the gray pile of logs and ash he can feel heat rising from the depths. 

With a stick he pushes away the ash and the dead coals to reveal some that are still warm, still burning. He walks to the edge of the woods. His bare feet sink into the thick, wet grass. He gathers a few sticks that he finds there.

He lays those sticks on top of the coal and blows gently, as he has seen Fili do. The sticks catch light and begin to crackle cheerfully as Kili feeds more sticks into the small fire.

“Kili?”

And there’s Fili. 

Kili stands.

As he comes closer he says, “Did the bus not come?” 

“Where’s Hazel?” Kili looks beyond Fili. An effort to delay this conversation for just a moment longer.

“She’s fishing with Peter and Miles.”

Kili nods.

“Kili, did the bus not show?”

Kili clears his throat and shifts his feet. “No. It did. It came.”

“Then why are you here?” Fili frowns.

Deep breath. “I couldn’t get on it. I’m staying.”

“Damn it, Kili!” Fili snaps. 

Kili does not flinch away. He can hear the fear that drives Fili’s frustration.

“You were supposed to get on that bus. You were supposed to be safe.”

Kili meets Fili’s gaze and he does not look away. He feels…  _ resolute.  _ He thinks that’s the word. He’s not disobeying to be difficult or to make his father angry. “I know. Fili, I know.”

Fili’s face crumples, “Then why are you still here?”

“Because I’m scared, Fili. I’m so scared. I’m scared of everything, but I don’t want to run away, not from this, not from you. I’m scared and, you know, I want to know what it’s like to be a grown up, to be 18, to be 35,” Kili says in a rush.

“Kili…” Fili takes a step closer.

Kili does not move. “I want to go home. I do want to be safe, I really do. I want all of us to be safe. I don’t want there to be some stupid war going on. But what if we can all get through this? What if there is life on the other side of this?”

“There will be,” Fili says gently. 

“If there is,” Kili continues. “I want to be here, Fili—with you. I don’t want to be in New York with my father and his wife. I don’t want to be there and to not know what is happening here, in your life, in Hazel and Miles’ lives. I want to be here.” He swallows thickly. “And if you don’t survive,” his voice cracks. “If  _ none  _ of this is here. Then I don’t want to be alive at all.”

Kili pulls the papers from Reynolds from the back pocket of his jeans and looks at them. “I don’t want to be safe if it means having to leave here.”

He thrusts the papers into the fire.

“No!” Fili cries. He lunges forward, grabbing for the papers. But their edges are already curling, turning black, and disappearing. Fili pulls the red card from the flames, but there is almost nothing left. He bites his lip and drops it back into the fire and looks up to meet Kili’s eyes.

Kili’s chest is heaving. He still feels resolute, but fear burns in his throat, scared that Fili will be angry, that Fili will reject him or send him away.

“Alright then,” Fili says. He reaches for Kili’s hand and squeezes.

Nothing else needs to be said.


	54. Chapter 54

“I’m going to win!” Miles shouts over his shoulder as they race through the open field just before the river.

“You’re so slow, Cousin Kili,” Hazel teases as she catches up to her brother. 

“That’s because you’re making me carry the basket,” Kili huffs. He reaches Miles and Hazel and drops the basket and doubles over his hands on his knees while he takes deep, gulping breaths.

Hazel grabs the basket, “We’re almost there!” She skips after Miles who has a large, plastic innertube looped around his torso. 

“You alright there?” Fili laughs and rubs on hand on Kili’s back when he catches up.

“No. I honestly think that I’m going to die,” Kili wheezes. He looks up to see Fili’s grin and he can’t breathe for an entirely different reason. 

“Here,” Fili grips Kili’s shoulder. “I’ll walk with you. No winners or losers. But I can’t guarantee that I won’t beat you there.”

“Bastard.”

Fili laughs again.

Without a moment of hesitation he leans in and kisses Kili breathless again. Kili is sure that his heart is about to explode.

“Come on.” Fili takes Kili’s hand and links his fingers between Kili’s and drags him along to the river, which is unchanged. It still moves along with the same noises. The water is still as cool. The breeze is just as pleasant. It is easy to forget that anything else in the world is happening. 

“Fili!” Hazel shouts from the water where she is floating on her back. “Aren’t you going to get in?”

“I’ll get in once you’ve turned into a prune,” Fili replies from his seat next to Kili. He’s sitting with his arms stretched behind him and his head dropped back between his shoulders to catch the sun on his face. It makes his hair glitter and highlights the light smattering of freckles on the bridge of his nose. 

Kili is stretched out on his stomach, but his hand rests on top of Fili’s. He looks up at Fili for a moment, but then closes his eyes and enjoys the silence, the sun, and the peace that he feels at this moment.


	55. Chapter 55

That night they are drunk on sunlight and joy; they all forget about the war. It seems very far away from their bit of paradise. They fish. They run through the fields laughing. And Miles teases Kili about his apprehension around cows.

“They’re really just giant space heaters,” Miles explains. He had lain down on top of a cow and it was looking at him curiously, but, deciding that he was not all that interesting, went back to ignoring him. 

There were no planes flying overhead and no ominous, fear-inducing radio messages once the radio had gone out. 

Peter stays with them and they stay up long after the sun sets eating potatoes. Fili had even made a trip back to the house to fetch a pan to make popcorn in. Hazel shrieks with delight when the kernels start pinging against the metal lid of the pan.

Fingers sticky with butter and stomachs full of popcorn, Miles, Hazel, and Peter start to play Bloody Murderer.

Fili and Kili stay with the fire, but they know when Hazel is found when they hear Peter and Miles shouting “Bloody Murderer” at the top of their lungs. Then they all rush back to the base, which is Fili. 

Miles catches hold of the neck of Fili’s shirt, choking him for a moment.

“Come on, Peter!” Miles shouts stretching himself out so that he is as close to Peter as possible with his free arm outstretched. But Hazel grabs Miles’ hand first, which leaves Peter to be “it” and to hide.


	56. Chapter 56

Peter approaches them waving a piece of bright yellow paper.

“Whot’s that?” Miles asks around a mouthful of food.

Peter holds it out for Miles to see, but Fili snags it before Miles can take it.

Peter flops down onto the grass next to Miles. “It says that we have to leave.”

“Stay with us!” Hazel says. “We don’t have one!”

Peter shakes his head. “I saw one on the front door of your house when I was coming here.”

“That’s for the house. It’s not for the barn,” Miles says.

Fili finishes reading over the paper and silently hands it to Kili.

_ You must evacuate the premises by Monday, August **, 20** at noon. _

_ Transports will be departing from the high street every two hours. Only bring what you need. You will be provided with food and shelter. You will be transported to a secure location where you will be safe from the enemy. _

_ Failure to evacuate will place you and your family in unnecessary danger. It will result in a court martial and swift punishment. _

Kili hands the paper to Peter. Miles fishes out a lighter and they light the evacuation notice on fire. It floats a short distance away where it settles on green grass and burns until there is nothing left. 

“What are we going to do?” Kili asks quietly.

“We’re not leaving. This is our home.”

  
  



	57. Chapter 57

The sun gives Fili a halo of gold.

Kili reaches up and runs his hands through Fili’s hair, shifting the halo only for it to fall back into place when he pulls his hands away. 

“Having fun?”

“Hmmm.” Kili squints. 

The sun warms his bare skin, still cooled from his swim. The grass itches as it presses into his skin. It marks him. But he is loath to move when Fili is half-draped across him.

Fili’s smile is gentle. “Silly.”

Kili lifts his head from the grass and catches Fili’s lips in a kiss.

They stay like that, trading kisses in the sun, for quite some time. The roots of Fili’s hair dry and it is wild beneath Kili’s fingers. Fili traces Kili’s bare shoulder, his waist—he smiles when Kili squirms—over his hip, and down his thigh. Fili catches Kili’s leg around the back of the knee and hitches it around his hip.

Fili lifts his head, lips kiss swollen, and looks around. 

“What?” Kili twirls one of Fili’s golden curls around his fingers.

“I wonder where Miles and Hazel got to.”

Kili laughs. “Is that what you’ve been thinking about?”

Fili sits up. He doesn’t answer as he looks around distractedly. 

Kili sits up and pulls loose grass from his hair. “You know that it's not polite to think about other things when someone is kissing you, right?”

“Hmm?”

“I said,” Kili climbs into Fili’s lap. “That’s it is rude to think about other things when I’m kissing you.”

Fili’s eyes glint, but before he can make a retort Kili is kissing him again. They fall back into the tall grass, only this time, Fili is pressed against the drying grass of late summer. Kili can  _ feel _ Fili relax beneath him, hands finding Kili’s waist. 

Time falls away until Kili yelps when a stream of cold water hits him on the side.

Fili rolls Kili to the side. “Miles!”

Miles takes off laughing, his squirt gun clutched in his hand. 

Fili and Kili’s eyes meet and they take off after Miles. Peter pops up from the grass and soaks Fili. Fili tackles him to the ground. Between The two of them they manage to get the squirt gun away from Peter. 

Peter takes off in Miles’ direction. 

“Come on,” Fili says quietly and together he and Kili slip through the tall grass. They come up behind Miles and Peter who are squatting in the grass and whispering to one another. Hazel sits beside them, but she is busy making a doll with grass.

Fili shoots a stream of water at Miles and hits him in the middle of the back.

Miles arches and shouts. He spins around but Kili is already on him and wrestling the second squirt gun away. Fili gets Miles a few more times.

“Not fair! Not fair!” Miles shouts after them when Fili and Kili run off laughing.

“War isn’t fair!” Kili shouts over his shoulder.


	58. Chapter 58

Fili sits up in the early morning light that seeps in through the cracks of the barn. He had started making plans to “winterize” the barn, whatever that meant.

Kili grumbles and rolls onto his back to look at Fili. He is tense, his sleep damp hair standing on end. His bare shoulders prickled with goose flesh.

“What is it?” Kili asks thickly.

“Shh. I thought I heard something,” Fili whispers.

Kili rubs the sleep and grit from his eyes. He listens. “I only hear the dogs.”

Jeb and Toki are barking outside. But they are getting further away.

“Probably just found a rabbit or something,” Fili agrees. He moves to lay down. Then he freezes. 

“What?” Kili asks.

Fili’s face goes white.

Cold rushes through Kili. He feels sick. He immediately reaches to straighten his blanket. His hands smoothing away the wrinkles to perfection. Then he hears what Fili hears. 

Boots. 

And hushed voices. 

Then the air is filled with the crack and spark of gunfire.

“Get down!” Fili shoves Kili down covering him with his own body.

“Fili!” Hazel cries.

Bullets burst the glass windows. They crack on the stone walls. A sharp piece of stone cuts Kili’s face. Blood drips down his face.

“Get down, Hazel!” Fili shouts. His voice cracking and high with fear.

Her eyes are wide. She stares down from the loft. Her teddy bear is clutched in her arms. Miles tugs her arm. Tries to pull her down. He is swearing at her.

Then the warm weight of Fili is gone. He is on the other side of the barn climbing the ladder. Hazel is falling into his arms. She wraps her arms and legs around him. She clings to him as he descends. 

“Miles, get down!”

Miles jumps from the loft to where Kili is flat against the hay. Fili drops Hazel into the pile. Kili grabs her and pulls her close. He covers her with his body. He can feel wet spots growing on his t-shirt from her tears. 

The gun fire stops.

Orders are shouted.

“Don’t shoot!” Fili shouts. He places himself between the door and his siblings and Kili. 

“Fili!” Kili hisses. “Don’t—”

“Don’t shoot! We’re just kids! Don’t—”

The barn door cracks against the wall. It’s hinges shattered. Soldiers in helmets. Soldiers in uniforms storm the space. Their guns pointed straight at Fili. Fili who has fallen to his knees with his hands raised. 

“LET ME SEE YOUR HANDS!”

“DOWN! DOWN! DOWN!”

One soldier with flashes on his shoulders steps forward and looks at Fili. Then to Kili who has Hazel pulled against his chest and Miles who is pressed to Kili’s back.

“All of you, OUT!” he barks. 

Weapons are lowered. The soldiers grab them. They’re dragged from the barn and thrown to the ground still covered with cool dew.

It shocks Kili. 

_ This is happening. _

Hazel whimpers and Kili reaches for her hand only to have his hand brutally kicked aside and something shouted at him. But he can’t hear anything that the soldiers are saying. His ears are filled with the sounds of gunfire, the fear in Fili’s voice, Hazel’s tears, and Miles’ cold fingers digging into his shoulder.

Kili vomits.

One of the soldiers swears and digs a boot into Kili’s ribs. 


	59. Chapter 59

They’re given time to grab their clothes so that they aren’t dragged through the field to the house in various states of undress and pyjamas. 

Kili is barefoot and his shirt is wet from the grass and his own sick.

Hazel’s cold damp hand is in his own as they are herded into the courtyard of the house. 

“I’m scared, Cousin Kili,” Hazel whispers. 

Kili gives her hand a squeeze. “It’s okay,” he whispers back. “I’m scared, too.”

Hazel nods and grips his hand tighter.

The courtyard is filled with soldiers, jeeps, men shouting orders, dogs barking and straining at tight leashes. 

“You’re lucky you weren’t killed!” The commander is snapping at them. “This whole area is crawling with enemy units. We need to get you out of here now.”

“We haven’t seen anyone,” Kili snaps back without thinking. The authority in the man’s voice reminds him too much of home, of barked orders and rules that he didn’t want to follow.

The commander gives Kili a stern look, but rather than shrinking away Kili bristles under it. 

“Girl, get in the van,” he orders Hazel and points to a drab green van with bench seats in the back.

Hazel moves, her eyes looking pleadingly at Fili.

“You’re not going anywhere alone,” Kili says, not letting go of her hand. 

“Boys! How old are you?” He continues without waiting to see that his previous order was obeyed.

Fili pushes in front of Kili and Hazel. “I’m sixteen. More than old enough to look after all of us. We don’t need any help.”

“You?” He pokes Kili in the chest with a gloved finger.

Kili winces. When he doesn’t answer he is poked again and the question is shouted this time. “Fifteen.”

Miles answers without being asked.

“We don’t need your help,” Fili repeats. 

The commander rolls his eyes. 

“You three!” He points at Kili, Miles, and Hazel. “Residential. You,” he points at Fili, “Newcastle. You’re old enough to carry a gun.”

Kili shoulders his way in front of Fili. “I’m an American! I want to speak to the American Embassy right now!” Kili demands.

“Stay where you are. We’re not leaving,” Fili says so that only they will hear. He takes Hazel’s other hand. 

The commander ignores Kili. “What did I say? You three, get in the van!” 

Kili’s stomach clenches. He grits his teeth and he does not move.

  
  



	60. Chapter 60

“Matthews, Storey, Isaacson, get them in the van!” 

One of the soldiers grabs Miles. “Let go of me!” Miles shouts as he is lifted from his feet. He pulls uselessly at the soldier’s grip.

Another grabs Kili’s arm. His fingers dig into Kili’s wrist to force him to release his hold on Hazels’ hand. “No!” Kili shouts. He spins around to push at the soldier. He tries to free his hand, but the soldier’s grip is tight.

“Fili!” Hazel shrieks. Kili can just see that another soldier has her under the arms. He is carrying her to the van where Miles already was tossed.

“Stop!” Kili throws his body weight away from the soldier hoping to break his grip.. “Let me go!” The tight grip burns his wrist.

“You can’t separate us!” Fili is shouting.

Kili cannot see him. He can hear Fili shouts and the shuffling of boots. Fili is fighting this separation.

“Mackintosh, some help,” the soldier holding Kili grunts. 

Kili kicks at him. His bare feet catch uselessly on the man’s body army. They tear on the cobblestones. But he doesn’t notice. Then another soldier has him by the upper arm. Fingers digging bruises into Kili’s skin. He is hauled backwards towards the van. 

Then he sees Fili. 

“Wherever they take you come back here! Promise?! Do you hear me? Come home!”

Two soldiers have Fili by the arms and another has a hand under Fili’s jaw and is shouting at him. “Sir, you need to calm down!” 

“Kili! Promise me!” 

Kili nods. His voice is small, “I promise.”

Kili is thrown into the van and he lands hard. He pushes himself to his feet ready to jump from the van. But he finds a gun leveled steadily at his chest. He stares for a moment. He drags his eyes away from the barrel of the gun to Fili. 

He is kneeling on the cobblestones. His nose is bleeding. And his arms are being twisted behind his back and cuffed together. 

Kili’s eyes go back to the gun. For a moment he considers pushing past the soldier; Fili  _ needs  _ him.

The door slams shut.

The van rumbles to life.

Kili screams. He pounds on the van door. Bruising his hands. “Let us go!” He can hear Hazel whimpering behind him. Miles talks quietly to her. He knows he should comfort her. To do what Fili would do.

But  _ Fili. _

Through the small window he sees Fili hauled roughly to his feet. Then the van turns onto the narrow tract that runs along the house and he can no longer see the house.

He can no longer see Fili.


	61. Chapter 61

Kili slumps to the floor. His t-shirt catches on the rough metal of the door. 

Hazel curls up next to him, sobbing. 

Kili wants to do the same, but he feels empty. He rests a hand on her unruly hair and stares at the side of the van and the windows. His thoughts feel stuck. 

_ Fili _ .

_ Home. _

And he wants to be sick.

He swallows forcefully and gives Hazel’s hand a small squeeze.

His voice cracks when he tries to speak. He tries again. “We’re going to be okay, Hazel.”

Miles sits on Hazel’s other side. “Yeah. You heard Fili. We’ll just find our way home no matter where they take us.”

Hazel’s tears soak Kili’s shirt and he grips her hand tighter. 


	62. Chapter 62

The van stops and the door opens. A soldier stands guard with his rifle raised. Mile shrinks and hides behind Hazel who has fallen asleep with her head in Kili’s lap.

More people are loaded onto the van, mostly women and children. Many of them are crying and when Kili listens to their conversations he learns that they were not the only family that was ripped apart that day.

The van pulls away again and it gets onto a highway. 

It is here that Kili first sees signs of war. 

Smoldering remains of cars sit on the edges of the highway. A tank sits abandoned in a field. He can see smoke in the distance and feel the thrumming of helicopter blades. At one point the van passes soldiers who are lining up bodies on the side of the road while others dig a large hole in the field adjacent to the highway. 

“Do you know where we’re going?” a woman asks Kili.

Kili shakes his head.

“Have you seen any terrorists?”

Kili stares out the window.

“No,” Miles says. “But we’ve seen a lot of planes!” 

Him and another boy keep talking together about the things that they’ve seen. Miles tells him about the explosion and how all the birds flew away.

Kili grits his teeth. Despite what just happened to them Miles is still excited when he talks about the planes, and the war. 

Hazel whimpers and stirs in her sleep.

Kili stops bouncing his leg and tries to relax for Hazel’s sake. 

“Kili?” she says quietly.

“Yeah?” he says thickly, leaning down so that he can hear her.

“Are we really going to be okay?”

Kili starts to say no, but stops himself. “Those soldiers said that they were going to take us someplace safe. And then we’ll go home. And we’ll be safe there.”

Hazel nods and sniffs wetly.

“What about Fili?” her voice disappears into tears when she says Fili’s name.

“He’ll definitely be okay,” Kili says firmly. “He kept all of us safe, remember?”

Kili thinks that he hears her say “okay.” She draws her knees up to her chest and presses her face into his stomach, hiding from the world.


	63. Chapter 63

Fili is not okay.

He is roughly hauled into the backseat of a military vehicle.

“You’ve got to calm down, kid,” one of the soldiers says with a laugh. “Getting all worked up isn’t going to help anybody.”

Fili kicks the soldier’s leg jostling the rifle that he has resting across his knees. The soldier seated next to Fili cuffs the back of his head. The blood dripping from his nose spatters across his knees.

“Fuck you,” he says thickly.

“You’re going to have to get better about listening where you’re going,” the soldier across from him says conversationally. “Or else you’re going to be in for a whole world of hurt.”

Fili shakes his head and winces. His entire body aches. His nose is bleeding, the metallic tang of blood fills his senses. His knees are scraped. He lost a shoe somewhere in the struggle. But at all pales in comparison to the rest of his pain. He can hear their shouts—Kili’s anger and Hazel’s tears—echoing in his ears. 

He clenches his fists and the cuffs dig into his wrists.

  
  



	64. Chapter 64

Miles falls asleep draped over his sister. Kili cannot sleep. He’s so tired. He wants to  _ move _ . But Hazel is still asleep on his lap. He settles for smoothing and detangling her hair.

His chest is tight. He has felt like he is on the verge of a scream since shortly after the others got loaded into the van. His thoughts are spiraling. He wants Fili. He is terrified. He keeps thinking of all the awful things that could be happening. And he just can’t… he can’t stop the thoughts. 

The van lurches roughly to a stop.

Hazel stirs. “Where are we?”

“I don’t know,” Kili whispers. “Go back to sleep.”

She rubs her face against his leg and settles down again. Then the doors of the van are ripped open. Hazel startles and grips at Kili’s leg. Miles goes wide eyed and startled. The other children squawk and cling to their mothers. 

It is dark outside. The men standing at the back of the van point flashlights in their faces blinding them, making them squint and flinch away. Kili can see the flash of guns in the beams of the flashlights.

“Is this all of them?” a voice demands. 

Another voice quietly counts. “Yes, Captain, they’re all here.”

“Alright, you know what to do.”

The van doors slam shut and they are surrounded by darkness again. Kili turns to look out the window. When the van starts up again it passes by a concrete building, by soldiers with grim faces and rifles held at the ready. Once they are past the building Kili can see rolled barbed wire fences. He shudders.

Hazel whimpers.

“I’m here,” Kili says quietly. He finds her hand in the dark. She grabs his hand with both of her hands, her small fingers digging into his hand. 

The van stops a short while later. The doors are opened again. 

A soldier with a clipboard points to a mother and her two children and tells them to get out. 

The van starts up a short while later. 

This happens three more times until Kili, Hazel, and Miles are the only ones left. Hazel has not let go of Kili’s hand. In the darkness Kili can just make out Miles’ hand on Hazel’s ankle.

The van stops again.

“You three, out,” the soldier says tersely. 

Kili helps Hazel up.

“Move it!” the soldier barks.

Kili scowls.

Another soldier with a flashlight says, “Follow me.” 


	65. Chapter 65

They’re standing on a street lined with semi-detached and detached homes with small, well-cared for gardens. They follow the soldier to the door of one of the detached homes.

“You’ll be staying here.” 

The soldier knocks on the door. It is opened moments later by a middle aged woman wearing a floral apron and holding a hand lamp.

“So this is them, is it?” she says.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She surveys them with a critical eye. Kili bristles and straightens his back. 

“Well you might as well come in,” she says brusquely. She steps back and opens the door more fully.

The door shuts behind them and the soldiers are left outside, but Kili does not relax.

“Shoes off.”

As Miles and Hazel struggle to remove their shoes in the narrow foyer without falling over she continues speaking. “My name is Mrs. Loren. This is my home and it is your home for the foreseeable future. But it is my home and you  _ will _ treat it with respect. You will keep it clean. And you  _ will _ follow the rules.”

Hazel’s hand slips into Kili’s again once she has removed her shoes.

“Follow me.”

They follow her silently. 

“This is the sitting room,” she gestures to a door on their left. You may use it, but you  _ must _ be quiet and well-behaved if myself or the Corporal are in there.” Through a door, “This is the kitchen. We’re on strict rationing. You will only eat what is given to you and nothing more. If I find you sneaking food I will not hesitate to report you.” She fixes them all with a glare until they all nod their heads. “Good,” she turns and keeps walking, the low heels of her shoes click on the tiled floor.

They follow her up the carpeted stairs. She pushes open the first door. “This is where you boys will stay. You can use the bed, but I ask that you not touch any of Jonathan’s things. He is in the army and he will be coming home.”

“The bathroom is at the end of the hall. You all need a wash, but the water tablets are being rationed again so that will have to wait until tomorrow.”

“Water tablets?” Kili asks.

She snaps her head around to look at him. “Goodness, child, where have you been? The terrorists have poisoned the water supply. We have to treat it before we can use it for anything.”

“But we’ve been drinking the water at home. And swimming in it.” Kili’s skin crawls.

“You should consider yourself lucky then that you’re not dead!” 

With that pronouncement she turns and briskly walks further down the hall.

“You’ll be staying in this room,” she says to Hazel and opens the next door. She looks expectantly at Hazel.

Hazel’s eyes are wide with panic. She looks from Miles and Kili to the woman and the open door and back again.

“Well, come on, child!” she scolds. “I don’t have all day.

“We’ll be right here, Hazel,” Miles assures her. “It’s closer than our rooms are back home.”

Hazel nods and smiles a little.

Mrs. Loren gives each of them a small pile of clean clothing, pajamas, jeans, t-shirts, and underwear. None of it fits particularly well, but it is clean and Kili is grateful. What he really wants is a bath. He can smell his stale sweat that smells of fear and anxiety.

Miles falls asleep almost instantly curled up beneath a blanket on the top bunk. 

Kil stares at the bottom of the mattress. He tries to relax, but his fingers and toes keep twitching. 

He nearly jumps out of his skin when the door creaks open.

“Miles? Kili?” Hazel says in a tearful voice.

Kili pushes himself up on one elbow. “I’m right here.”

Her feet barely make a sound as she rushes across the room and throws herself onto the bottom bunk with Kili.

“Hey. We’ll be okay. We’ll go home as soon as possible,” Kili tries to sound confident and soothing, but he is sure that he does not succeed.

Hazel curls up on her side in the middle of Kili’s bed. “I want my mum,” she sobs.

Kili pulls the blanket over both of them and lays down in the space that is left to him. “I know. I’m sorry,” Kili whispers.


	66. Chapter 66

Kili is still awake when the sun comes in through the heavy drapes. Mrs. Loren’ raping knock on the door follows not long after. “Up!” she says flinging the door open. “Breakfast is in five minutes.”

Hazel’s eyes are rimmed with red, but she seems calmer.

“We’ll see you downstairs, Haze,” Miles says rummaging through the clean clothes he had been given. “I hope they have bacon. What do you want?”

Hazel’s smile is small. “Eggs.”

“As long as it’s not porridge, right?”

Hazel nods and her smile widens.

Mrs. Loren is pouring coffee when they try to descend the stairs as silently as possible. A man in a military uniform is already sitting at the table. He has a sheaf of papers in one hand and a coffee mug in the other.

“Oh, these are them.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Loren says tersely. “I wasn’t expecting three of them. I thought they told us that we would get a mother with children. I don’t have to raise a careless woman’s children.”

The man gives his wife a pointed look and then looks at the three of them standing in the door.

“Well,” she smooths her apron. “Sit down. Eat. You’ll need the energy.”

Kili slides into one of the empty chairs. “Why?”

“Oh,” Mr. Loren says and lowers the paper that he had been reading. “You’ll be working on the collective farm. I don’t know what you’ll be doing, but you’ll be assigned a duty once you get there. It’s dirty work, but today is water tablet day so you should be able to wash up when you get back.”

Kili looks at the food on the plate that Mrs. Loren had just placed in front of him, toast and a slice of something that smells like meat but does not look like it. 

Hazel looks at him across the table. She has not touched the food yet. Miles’ has already disappeared and he is looking hungrily as Hazel’s plate.

Kili tears his toast in half and sandwiches the possibly-a-meat-product between the slices of bread and takes a bite. 

Hazel picks up her toast and does the same.


	67. Chapter 67

Fili stares at the corrugated metal roof above his cot. He is surrounded by other boys about his age. Their noises fill the air—breathing, snoring, grinding teeth, farting, and other noises that come after the other boys think that everyone is asleep.

His wrists throb.

He had asked questions when he arrived, but no one would answer him.

Dawn takes too long to come.

Soldiers throw open the doors and yell. Verbally abusing anyone who does not move fast enough. They are herded outside and lined up. Fili just copies what the other boys are doing. Many of them seem to know what they are doing, but there are some like Fili who stare about themselves with confusion. 

Fili notices that everyone who knows what they are doing are wearing uniforms of green pants and grey shirts. Their heads are shaved.

After a hasty breakfast that is served to them from a giant metal pot beneath a tent and eaten standing with their backs to the wind. Fili and all the other new boys are gathered together.

His head is shaved.

“It’s for the lice,” they tell him. 

Fili does not feel like himself when he runs a hand over the short bristles of his hair, when the wind off the North Sea buffets him beneath the grey sky.

The whole complex as far as Fili can see is grey and concrete.

But he can smell the sea on the wind.

And he hopes that wherever Hazel, Miles, and Kili are is better than this place.

  
  



	68. Chapter 68

“Put these on,” a man with a dour face says, shoving a pair of coveralls into Kili’s hands. 

Hazel looks at her own pair. Hers are far too large and Miles hands over his belt and they manage to have it so that Hazel can actually walk and isn’t tripping over the pant legs with every step.

Then they are separated. 

Miles and Hazel are told to follow a woman with a kind but worried expression and Kili is taken in another direction. 

He is handed a tool with a long wooden handle and a bottom with three large metal tines. 

“You’re going to be with them,” Kili is instructed. “You’re going to dig up potatoes. You stick this end in the ground, push it deeper with your foot, and then scoop up through the earth. Then you load the potatoes into a wheelbarrow. When it is full you take it to that truck.” 

Each step is demonstrated.

Kili looks around for the group that Miles and Hazel were with.

“Do you think you can handle that?” 

Kili nods. His usual response bubbles up, but he keeps his mouth shut. He is not entirely certain if he will escape a smack if he starts running his mouth. That is not what scares him. He does not know if they’ll take him away from Hazel and Miles. If he causes trouble they might take him elsewhere. And Miles and Hazel would be left here. He thinks he can manage to get back to the house, but he knows that he would never be able to find this place again.

He takes the tool uncertainly.

By lunch—some grey slop in a metal bowl that he does not eat because Hazel cannot see him—he has blisters. 

And when a whistle is blown, signalling the end of the day, his blisters have popped and dirt has been ground into them and the lines of his skin. Wiping them on his pants does nothing to help. It only hurts. 

He nearly cries with relief when he sees Miles and Hazel sitting in the back of the truck that they are loaded into to go back to the winding streets with the brick homes. Everything about it had felt strange the night before, but in the cool light of the dawn it had only seemed more surreal.

Hazel takes his hand. Kili cannot suppress his wince and his hiss of pain.

“Are you okay, Cousin Kili?”

Kili nods. “Just a blister,” he says tightly. “What did you do?”

“Just sorting the yucky potatoes from the good ones,” Hazel shrugs.

Miles is quiet.

“Quiet back there!” a soldier snaps at them.

Hazel looks worried.

Kili squeezes her hand. 


	69. Chapter 69

The water tablet fizzes when Kili drops it into the sink that he has filled with hot water. The overalls had been discarded outside the door. Mrs. Loren insisted that those filthy garments belonged in the shed. “I suppose that I could wash them once a week,” she had said with a look of disgust. 

Hazel and Miles had washed before Kili. He had stood in the hall and tried not to fidget. Mrs. Loren snapped at him so he was not successful at all. She scolded him for getting dirt on her wallpaper.

Now he stands in the bathroom. His dirty jeans and t-shirt are crumpled in a heap on the floor. The overalls did their job, but did not keep the hems of his clothes safe, they were caked with dirt. Clean clothes sit neatly folded on the back of the toilet. 

He leans over the sink and rests his hands on the rim of the sink. He sighs and picks up a bar of soap. He dunks his hands into the water and begins to scrub his hands.

He  _ scrubs  _ like he wants to remove his skin.

The dirt is gone. The water in the sink is nearly back.

But Kili does not see it through the tears in his eyes.

  
  



	70. Chapter 70

Each day progresses the same as the one before it. 

Mrs. Loren wakes them before dawn with a rap on the door and a shout, breakfast is always a depressing affair often consisting of porridge or questionable meat products, they’re loaded on a transport with canvas top and sides and taken to the farm where they work, get a lunch break of something equally depressing, and then work until they’re loaded on the transport again and taken back to the house, they wash, eat dinner and listen to Corporal Loren and his wife very politely discuss events thats are solidly _not_ about the war and _not_ of any real interest to Kili, then they are allowed to sit in the parlor as long as they are quiet until the sunsets and the mandatory blackout begins.

The only way Kili knows how much time has passed by marking the Sundays, the only days that they don’t work, on the inside of the bedroom door. 

Hazel still sleeps in his bed. He could swear that she is taller, that she looks older.

Miles is taller, too, but he listens with enthusiasm whenever anyone talks about the war. He talks of being old enough to fight. Kili and Hazel share a look and Kili squeezes her hand.

His sixteenth birthday comes and goes. He tells no one. 

The sun rises later and later, there is now frost on the ground when they arrive at the farm, and the sun sets earlier and earlier, they eat by lamplight with the blackout shades drawn. They are sent to bed right after dinner while Corporal and Mrs. Loren sit in the parlor and listen to the radio.

Every day drags on, but once it is over it blends into all of the days that came before.

He dreams of Fili almost every night. 

When he lays in bed staring at the mattress above his head and listening to Hazels’ quiet breathing he thinks about Fili, worries about him, hopes that he is okay, that he is safe.

Despite the darkness, and the silence that is punctuated by the screaming of planes overhead, he cannot sleep. He closes his eyes and thinks about that summer, the sun, the laughter, everything that feels so far away now. He pictures the flash of sun on Fili’s hair, how the wind tousles it _just so_ , and how he itched to reach out and run his fingers through it. 

He tries to remember every kiss.

He often starts with that first kiss on the wall. The one in the sun where he felt like his chest would explode; the kisses that tasted like smoke beside the fire; the ones in the field beneath the sun when they felt like nothing bad could happen. He remembers the smell of Fili, sometimes he wakes and he could swear that Fili had just been in the room. 

Sometimes he starts with the last kiss, not that he knew that it would be their last kiss for a while. It had been late, Hazel and Miles long since asleep in the loft, and they had been talking quietly to each other about their lives before the war. Fili had laughed at something he had said and then kissed him soundly, pressing him into the soft hay and the blanket covering it. It was no different from earlier kisses, until it was. It took on a hard, biting, urgent edge. Kili’s fingers scrabbling to remove Fili’s shirt, Fili’s hips pressed to his own, _rolling_ , soft gasps. 

And then Fili had pulled back, slowed the kiss despite Kili’s physical and whispered protestations. He settled for the feel of Fili’s bare skin beneath his hands, the press of Fili’s body against his own. They had fallen asleep tangled together, hay in Fili’s hair, only to wake up and find that the world had turned on its head again.

Sometimes he sleeps peacefully and dreams of those endless days.

And sometimes he has nightmares.

  
  



	71. Chapter 71

A gun is pressed into Fili’s hands.

Cool metal shocks his skin, burns his calluses that he earned while caring for the earth. 

“I can’t,” he protests and pushes the gun back. He lets go. The thought of holding it, the thought of using it, the thought of ending a living thing’s life makes him cold and numb.

_ I can’t. I won’t be me if I do this. _

“You will,” the soldier snarls and shoves the gun back into Fili’s unwilling and limp fingers. “And if you drop it there will be consequences.”

Fili knows those  _ consequences _ all too well by now. 

It took him days to feel warm after they made him stand outside overnight on the sea wall, in the rain, in October.

He only knows that it is October because the date is announced every morning.

_ What a pointless thing dates are at a time like this,  _ Fili always thinks to himself.

His fingers curl loosely around the gun and the soldier moves on, pressing another gun into another young man’s hands, but this one seems eager, excited for a chance to prove himself. 

Fili stares at his feet. 

Army issued clothing wraps his body, it curls around him, caressing him, making promises of protection that it cannot keep. He would go naked if he had the choice.

It starts to rain. It pings on the metal buildings, on the guns. It splats on the concrete. And Fili wishes he could hear the soft rush of rain falling on grass.

Fili misses the sun.

  
  



	72. Chapter 72

“Kili?” 

“Yeah?” 

“When are we going home?” 

The bedroom is pitch dark. The blackout drapes are doing their job and they are not allowed to have any light sources in their room. Mrs. Loren had deemed it too dangerous; “What if one of you knocks it over in the middle of the night? The whole house could go up!” 

A few months ago Kili would have heartily agreed with her, his childhood nightmares about fires coming back to him full force, but now he thinks she is being ridiculous. They aren’t toddlers after all. Can’t they be trusted to look after a single candle? It could even sit on the other side of the room from the beds if need be. 

Miles pokes his head over the edge of the bunks. 

“I …” Kili starts. He swallows and then starts again. “I don’t…” He stops again. He shouldn’t say that. He should have a plan. What would Fili do right now? What would Fili say?

He settles on “Soon.” He continues, “There isn’t much light right now. We wouldn’t get far. And we need supplies.”

“What kind of supplies?” Hazel asks

“Where do we get supplies?” Miles asks at the same time.

“We’ll probably have to steal supplies,” Kili says quietly, just in case Mrs. Loren is lurking outside the closed bedroom door.

“That’s not very nice,” Hazel whispers. 

“We’ll need food, water tablets, probably some warmer clothes because we’ll be outside the whole time.”

Miles nods. “It rains a lot back home during the winter.”

“It will probably take us a while to get everything that we need.”

“I can help!” Hazel interjects.

Kili nods.

“When do you think we’ll be ready?” Miles asks.

“After Christmas. Probably later. We’ll want the days to be longer.”

Hazel’s excitement falls away at Kili’s words.

Her lower lip wobbles, “How can we have a Christmas without mum and Fili?”

Miles drops down from the top bunk.

“It won’t be, not really,” Miles says, climbing over Kili to sit next on Hazel’s other side. 

Kili scoots over to escape Miles’ bony knees. 

Kili is at a loss of what to say. 

“We can make them cards, right? Like we did last year?”

Hazel sniffs, “Okay. That’ll be okay, I guess.”

“And he’s in the army. Maybe he can find out where Fili is,” Miles continues, his voice rising with his own excitement. “And we can send him a card! And then he’ll be able to write back.”

Kili says nothing. 

The door pops open.

“You children need to be quiet!” Mrs. Loren hisses. 

Kili moves to block Miles from Mrs. Loren’s view because Miles is sticking his tongue out. “Sorry. Hazel had a nightmare.”

Her expression softens minutely. “Well, if you must talk, keep it down.”

The door slams shut.

Miles makes a mocking face and Hazel laughs.

  
  



	73. Chapter 73

Miles shuts the bedroom door quietly, so slowly that Kili almost can’t see it move.

“I think they’re asleep,” Miles whispers.

Kili nods. He takes a deep breath. “Okay, let’s do this.”

“I don’t see why I have to stay here,” Hazel grumbles.

“You’re the first line of defence,” Miles says. “The most important.”

Hazel doesn’t look convinced. 

“We’ll be back so quickly that you won’t even know that we’re gone.”

Kili grabs the duffle they found in the room’s closet, solidly in the “don’t touch” territory, and slips out the door and down the hall after Miles. Their stockinged feet silent on the carpet. Kili can feel the rough fabric through a large hole in his sock.

Kili pulls the key from the small pocket on his jeans and slips it into the lock. They shut the door once they’re inside the tiny pantry. 

That’s when they dare to turn on the flashlight that they found along with the duffle and other potentially useful items.

“Wow,” Miles breathes.

Kili looks. Every shelf is packed with food, like the hiding place back at the farm. There are canned vegetables, a lot of that canned meat product that they’ve been eating a lot of, beans, lentils, evaporated milk and other non-perishables. 

“Here,” Kili opens the duffle and hands it to Miles. He looks for items where there are more than a handful. There are a lot of lentils, but he has no idea how they would be able to eat that quickly. He skips over them. He takes a packet of water tablets and places it in the duffle, a can of creamed corn—Miles pulls a face at that one—canned beans, 3 cans of condensed soup.

“Look.”

Kili looks to where Miles had indicated. Tucked between packets of brown rice and cans of meat there is a gold wrapper. Kili pulls it out, a chocolate bar. 

He shakes his head. “We can’t take this. There’s only one. They’d notice if it went missing.”

Miles looks disappointed.

“If it’s still here when we’re leaving we can grab it, okay?”

Miles nods.

Kili looks in the duffle. “I think that’s it. Let’s get back before anyone notices that we’re not in bed.”

Miles looks in the bag doubtfully.

“They’ll notice if we take more.” He doesn’t add that he would not be surprised if Mrs. Loren counted the food daily and kept an inventory. “After the next food delivery we’ll see what else we can get.”

“That’s gonna take forever!” Miles protests.

“Better forever than caught,” Kili snaps. 

Miles doesn’t protest and follows Kili out— he locks the door carefully and tucks the key away again— and back to the bedroom. They stash the duffle in the closet. Kili carefully moved things around so that it looked like it did before they touched it.


	74. Chapter 74

A few days before Christmas Kili filches a notebook from the corporal’s office. He would ask, but he doesn’t want to have to lie. 

Mrs. Loren has painstakingly set up a Christmas tree and other decorations. She even hangs a stocking for her son on the mantel in the sitting room. But it does not feel festive. Kili is used to Christmas’ with snow and family, even if it was only his father and stepmother. Kili might not have liked her, but she always did try to include him. Guilt twinges in his chest when he thinks of that. 

Mrs. Loren put lights on the tree and sighs in the evenings and complains about how they can’t light them. Her husband always tells her that “needs must” and goes back to his reports.

In bed that night Kili starts a list in the notebook. Hazel sleeps next to him. Kili still cannot sleep. And now his dreams tend more to nightmares than to sunny fantasies.

_ Things We  _ _ Need _

Is the first list. 

_ Things that Would  _ _ Help _

Is the second. 

On another page he writes, “ Food .”

He has been watching Mrs. Loren prepare dinner. Keeping track of the amount of food she prepares for five. 

_ Days? _

He has no idea how far they’ll have to walk. He doesn’t even know what direction they should go.

He draws his knees to his chest, notebook crushed against his chest, pages wrinkling, and drops his head onto his knees. His knees press into his eyes. 

_ I wish you were here, Fili. _


	75. Chapter 75

They don’t have to work on Christmas Eve. 

Hazel is curled up on the couch in the sitting room fidgeting and picking at a hole in her jeans. 

“I miss Fili,” she says quietly.

Kili looks up from the notebook that he has taken to carrying everywhere with him. It’s edges are already rumpled and dirt smeared. He still has not answered the most important question or figured out  _ how  _ exactly they’re going to make it home.

“Did you want to write a letter to him?”

Hazel looks up, “How would he get it?” 

“We could always find a bottle and put your letter in there. Then we’d just have to find a river to put it in.”

Kili tears a page from his notebook and gives it to Hazel along with his pen and the cap that he has been chewing on. 

“Or we could always bury it and then the earth will whisper it to Fili.”

“I like that idea,” Hazel says, taking the offered pen.

Kili watches her write. Her letters are looping and slanted. She fills one side. And then she fills the second side. He gives her another page.

He is tempted to read over her shoulder, but he doesn’t.

Kili sits back on the couch and lets his head fall back. He starts to compose a letter to Fili in his head.

_ I miss you.  _

_ I hope you’re safe. _


	76. Chapter 76

Fili knows that it is a new year now only because some idiots were getting themselves in trouble by shooting off fireworks. He remains curled in his corner with a blanket drawn around his shoulders. 

_ That means I missed Christmas. _

Fili shuts that thought down. He starts running over how to dismantle, clean, and reassemble his gun. Whenever thoughts of home catch up to him he does this. He thinks he could do it in his sleep. He knows he can shoot and reload the gun while still half asleep. He had done it only a few days ago.

_ Was that Christmas? _

He starts over with the dismantling, cleaning, and reassembling his gun in his head.

  
  



	77. Chapter 77

“Keep watch,” Kili hisses to Hazel.

“What do you need from his office?”

“I just need to look for something,” Kili answers. 

Hazel straightens and tries to look grownup. 

Kili slips into the office. He carefully moves papers. He opens drawers. He peeks at the contents of shelves. He is about to give up when he spots what he needs. There is a map. It had fallen between the desk and the wastebin. He carefully unfolds it to not make any noise. He quickly finds Norwich and then he finds the farm. 

He hears footsteps in the hall.

“Kili,” comes Hazel’s anxious voice.

Kili stuffs the map down the front of his jeans and grabs a pen.

“What were you doing in there?” Mrs. Loren snaps at him just as he’s shutting the door to the office.

Kili holds up the pen.

She scowls at him. “Ask next time!”

Kili nods and heards Hazel in front of him and away from the office.

“Did you find it?” Hazel whispers.

“Yeah,” Kili says. “I got it.”

Hazel tilts her head back and smiles at him.


	78. Chapter 78

Jonathan Loren had been something of a hiker. In his closet Kili found backpacks, cans of sterno, a sterno stove, matches in a prescription pill bottle, a first aid kit, emergency blankets and bivy sacks, a compass and waterproof map bag, and other items. There was also a well worn copy  _ Orienteering: The Sport of Navigating with Map and Compass. _ __

Kili studies the book during his long sleepless nights.

He cups the compass in his hands and practices while the transport takes the winding paths through the residential district through the manned checkpoint to the farm. He strung the compass on a cord and keeps it tucked under his shirt to keep it from getting broken.

Miles asks questions and Kili does his best to explain, but he is not sure that he understands it completely.

March follows a wet and dreary February. 

Kili convinces Mrs. Loren to make a cake—it didn’t have any eggs, but it was something—for Hazel’s birthday.

“When’s Fili’s birthday?” Kili asks that night. 

“May 9th,” Hazel yawns.

Kili nods. He writes it down in his notebook. He circles it many times. 

_ We’ll be home by then. _


	79. Chapter 79

Fili’s fingers tighten around his gun as they wait. Their commander is watching something through his binoculars.

Fili’s hands twitch.

He just wants this to be over. He just wants to go back to sleep. The darkness makes every moment stretch on for an eternity.

A young man from Manchester, Hank, sits to his right. He’s much more relaxed. He lights a cigarette and offers one to Fili.

The image of another cigarette flashes through his mind.

Fili shakes his head. “Those’ll kill you.”

Hank snorts, choking on the smoke. “I doubt that it’s the cigarettes’ll get me. It’ll be those damn terrorists. The Captain doesn’t seem to like our location.”

Fili nods and looks to the captain again. His binoculars are still glued to his eyes. 

“If we’re gonna die today I want to do it now rather than freezing in this mud for another hour,” Hank grumbles. 

A whistling fills the air.

“EVERYONE DOWN!” comes the shouted order.

Fili ducks. His helmet sliding forward over his eyes; he had loosened it to help it dry out. 

The earth quakes beneath him. He curls into a ball. Eyes closed. Numb fingers clutching his gun. 

It stops. 

He opens his eyes. 

“That was close,” Hank laughs and wipes mud from his cheeks.

There is no warning before the second one hits. 

Fili feels nothing before he slams into the ground. He sees Hank only a few feet away. Or, what is left of Hank.

His fingers reflexively tighten on the gun that he is no longer holding .


	80. Chapter 80

Kili wakes up with a start.

“Fili?”

The room is quiet except for Hazel and Miles’ soft breathing. 

In the dream he had seen Fili in the ground. His skin had been pale and blue.

Kili climbs over Hazel as quickly as he can and dashes for the bathroom.

He kneels in front of the toilet gasping with tears running down his face.

“We have to go. We have to leave,” he chants to himself, arms wrapped around his stomach and rocking. 

_Please let it just be a dream._

“That can’t be the last time I saw you, Fili. It can’t. You have to smile again. This can’t be it.” 

His forehead rests against the cool porcelain as he sobs.


	81. Chapter 81

“Private Durin?” 

Red crosses on white backgrounds swim in his vision.

Brown eyes.

_ Kili.  _

Fili reaches for a hand. Anything.


	82. Chapter 82

“Ten days,” Kili says. “I think it will take us ten day to walk home.”

“Do we have enough?” Miles runs a hand over the cans in the duffle.

Kili nods, “I think so.” He counts the cans again and checks his notes. “I think we have enough.”

They’re sitting in front of the closet door squinting at the supplies they’ve pulled from the closet and the notebook in the faint moonlight. 

Kili has done this himself every night since he had that dream. 

The wait is chafing him. But he can’t fuck this up. He can’t. 

Hazel sits cross legged watching them. “When can we leave?”

Kili looks at his notes and at the supplies.

His stomach twists in apprehension. 

“Tomorrow,” he says quietly.

Hazel grins and hugs him. “We’re going home!”

Miles lets out a quiet  _ whoop. _


	83. Chapter 83

The next day is nothing special. They’re woken by Mrs. Loren. They eat. They go to the farm. They work. They get lunch. And then they get on the transport to go back to the house. 

Miles is vibrating with nervous energy. Kili has to tell him to shut up several times when he tries to talk about the plan when there are other people around .

The drive is quiet and Kili stares at his fingers. He’s taking deep breaths and trying not to fidget; he does not want to draw any attention to them.

Then he smells smoke.

His head snaps up. He can see nothing, but he knows that they’re near the checkpoint.

Hazel tugs on his hand. “What’s happening, Kili?” 

“I don’t know. Shh.” 

Then the transport roughly reverses and turns. 

Women start screaming.

“THEY’VE TAKEN THE CHECKPOINT!” 

Kili stares for a moment. Dark figures crowd around the checkpoint. The gate is up. And fallen soldiers lay on the road.

Rifle fire.

“DOWN!” He shoves Hazel and Miles down beneath the metal walls of the transport.

Someone screams as bullets punch through the metal and into their legs. 

Kili closes his eyes and  _ hopes. _

The wheels squeal on the pavement.

The gunfire stops and Kili dares to peak over the transport’s low side. Someone had fallen from the transport and was shouting and chasing after it. The driver does not stop. Kili watches the person fall. They stop yelling.

“Kili?” Hazel whimpers and reaches for his hand. 

“This changes nothing,” Kili whispers back. “We’re still leaving.”


	84. Chapter 84

They don’t bother to remove the muddy work overalls. Dirt falls from them as they enter the house. The Corporal and Mrs. Loren are arguing in the parlor.

“I’m not leaving! This is our home!”

Kili looks at Miles and Hazel and then they try to climb the stairs as quietly as possible. 

“Here,” Kili hands out the backpacks that he had put together the night before while Hazel and Miles slept.

The light falls while Kili checks for anything that they may have forgotten. He runs over his list in his head. He runs over it on paper.

He takes a deep breath. “I think we’re good.”

They shut the bedroom door behind them. They’re halfway down the stairs when Kili freezes. Miles bumps into him.

“Do you hear…  _ planes?” _

Miles looks up. His throat bobs when he swallows. He nods.

They don’t move.

Then there is a screaming sound.

The earth shakes and they’re thrown against each other.

“Bombs,” Miles whispers, giving a voice to Kili’s fears. 


	85. Chapter 85

Everything is white and fuzzy when Fili wakes up. 

Nearby someone is angry. They’re not shouting, but it’s a near thing. It’s more of a controlled growl. Words cut short by teeth. Eyes blazing.

Fili thinks he knows that voice.

“—he even doing in your company?”

“He was assigned to it. Just like a bunch of other under-18s,” a voice replies. 

_ My captain,  _ Fili thinks. 

_ My gun _ is his next thought. He’ll be in trouble for losing it. 

“And none of you  _ morons _ bothered to run his name?”

“I—” the captain starts to say.

“Assumed someone else had?” the voice snarls.

“Yes, sir,” the captain says tightly. 

“You’re lucky he wasn’t killed,” the voice continues. “In the future don’t assume that someone has done your job for you. You’re dismissed. Get out of my sight.”

Fili tries to move. He still cannot quite place the voice. Everything hurts and he sinks back down to his pillows. 

Then someone else comes into view. “Incompetent fools. Should never have been given officers’ stars,” the voice grumbles, but now it is more defeated than angry.

Fili frowns.

“Oh, thank fuck,” the voice breathes. “You’re awake. Your mother would have me skinned alive if I let anything happen to you.”

The person pulls a chair close and takes Fili’s hand.

His eyes are very blue.

“Water?” Fili asks to hide his confusion and give himself another minute to think.

“Yeah, let me help you,” he moves to adjust pillows behind Fili and to help him sit up. “Here,” he holds out a cup with a straw in it.

Fili starts to reach for the cup. But it  _ hurts.  _ He groans.

“Here. Just,” the man holds the cup closer and adjusts the straw.

His eyes are sad. “Oh, fox, what happened to you,” he says softly. 

Then Fili recognizes the face, the voice.


	86. Chapter 86

The screaming of the bombs does not stop. When they step outside they see the house next door is nothing but smoke and rubble. 

Kili grabs Hazel’s hand. 

They run.

They’re halfway to the woods outside the residential district when it happens.

They’re thrown to the ground. Clods of damp earth rain down on them. Kili curls into a ball and hears a high whining noise that he does not realize he is making. It blends with the low roar in his ears that reduces all other sounds to a distant hum.

Hazel’s hand is still in his. Her grip bone-crushing. 

“Come on!” He hauls her to her feet. His voice feels too loud but muffled at the same time to his ears.

They reach the cover of a windbreak, a distance from the houses and the shouting and the chaos. 

Hazel says something on the edge of a fearful sob.

Kili tears his eyes away from the flames. “What?” He ducks closer to try and hear her better.

“Where’s Miles?” 

  
  



	87. Chapter 87

Kili looks around. He searches for Miles’ sandy hair, no longer badly trimmed because Mrs. Loren had seen to that.

“Miles!” Hazel shouts.

“Shush!” Kili whispers harshly.

“But they won’t hear us!” Hazel snaps. “The bombs are so loud.”

“Miles won’t be able to hear us either.”

Hazel thinks about it and nods. “Maybe he went back to the house,” she suggests.

Kili shakes his head. “We have everything. Why would he go back?”

Hazel’s eyes fill with tears. She stares at him. She has no more answers than he does.

Kili looks back to the houses just in time to see another explosion in the distance followed by the rumble of the earth beneath his feet. 

“Stay here.”

Hazel grabs his sleeve. “Where are you going?” 

“To look for your brother.”

“I want to come.” 

“No! Stay here!” Kili orders. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

Hazel scowls, but releases his arm.

Kili steps back into the open field, out of the meager cover of the bare branched trees.


	88. Chapter 88

Kili’s skin crawls. He is sure that he is being watched. He ducks closer to the ground.

He scans the field looking for Miles. But he is also watching for anything else, a flash of firelight on metal, a shadow too large and man-shaped to be a tree.

“Miles?” 

The flashes of lights do nothing to help Kili’s search. 

He works across the field; getting closer and closer to the far side where the narrow roads wind together in a tangled mess.

He stumbles on the edge of a ragged hole that wasn’t there when they ran across the field. 

“Wha—” And then he connects the dots. A bomb crater. He scrabbles backwards. The rubber soles of his sneakers slip in the bare, damp dirt. 

He immediately trips over something else. 

Then he sees what he tripped over.

Who he tripped over. 

“No. No no no no no…”

  
  



	89. Chapter 89

Kili grabs Hazel’s hand and drags her away from the field, away from the houses, away from everything that she should never have had to know about.

“Kili!” she protests. She digs her heels in, sliding on the leaf debris from the previous year, and peels at his fingers that are crushing the bones of her thin wrist.

Kili says nothing. He walks faster; shoving low hanging branches out of his way and pulling Hazel along.

“Let go, Cousin Kili!” She kicks at his legs. 

“We need to keep moving.”

“What about Miles? We need to wait for him!” Her feet catch on a tree root. It brings them to a momentary stop and then Kili’s forward momentum pulls her forward and she falls to the ground. “Where’s my brother?”

Kili stops. “We can’t stop. We have to keep going.”

“But—”

“He’ll catch up,” Kili says quietly, but he doesn’t look at Hazel when he says this. His fingers feel for the object he had tucked into the pocket of his jeans only minutes before.

Hazel looks at the moist debris soaking her jeans. She nods. 

When she stands she takes Kili’s hand and hurries along as he pushes forward. The sounds of planes and bombing fading.


	90. Chapter 90

Fili’s head is less fuzzy when he next sees Thorin. The doctors had talked a lot about concussions, but he had stopped listening after he heard the words “discharge on medical grounds.”

_ Home. _

He’d be able to go home. And for the first time in months he allows himself to wonder if Kili and the others made it home okay. If they’re already there. 

He’s dreamt of them; curled up in the lambing barn, sitting around a fire, waiting for him.

His thoughts freeze there. His fingers find the scar running from his hairline to behind his ear.  _ But I’m not the same.  _

“How are you feeling?” Thorin asks when he approaches Fili’s bed in the ward of identical metal beds with crisp, white sheets. 

Fili shrugs. 

“I know. Stupid question.” Thorin sits. “I brought you this.” He pulls a chocolate bar from the pocket of his coat and sets it on Fili’s lap.

Fili picks it up and turns it over. “This is Hazel’s favorite. Hazelnut.” His smile is small, tight, bitter.

Thorin clears his throat. “I wanted to ask you last time, but the doctors told me not to push you. Where are Miles and Hazel? I sent men to the house, but no one was there. I even had them check all the outbuildings.”

_ Oh.  _

“I don’t know,” Fili whispers. “They separated us.”

“Do you remember the name of the commander that was there that day?”

Fili shakes his head. That whole day is a blur of pain.

“Kili’s with them.”

“Kili?”

Fili nods. The movement aches. The doctors had told him to keep his eyes closed as much as possible to let his brain heal. They’d even given him a sleep mask.

“Oh, yeah, Julie mentioned that he was going to spend the summer at the house,” Thorin says thoughtfully. “But they got the Americans out.”

“He wouldn’t go,” Fili says thickly. “He refused to leave.”

“Oh.”

“The guy that day said something about ‘residential’?” Fili offers. 

“I’ll see if I can find them.”

“Okay.”


	91. Chapter 91

Kili is unnerved by the crinkling sound that accompanies his movement when he wakes up.

But then he remembers.

He is cocooned in a dark green “emergency bivy” which, according to its packaging, reflects 75% of the occupant’s heat back towards them. He peeks out of the sacks and sees Hazel sitting up and staring through a small gap in the juniper bush where they had decided to hide so they could get some sleep.

Kili had fallen asleep almost immediately. 

He sits up. Everything feels gritty and numb. He scrubs his hands over his face.

“Hey,” he says softly. She doesn’t respond. He reaches out to touch Hazel’s shoulder.

She startles and pulls away.

“It’s just me.”

Hazel nods and wipes her face on her sleeve before turning around. “I know.”

Kili squirms out of the sack. “Do you want something to eat?”

Hazel shakes her head.

“You should eat this at least.” Kili tries to give her a granola bar. 

She draws her knees to her chest. “I’m not hungry,” she mumbles.

“For later? You can put it in your pocket.”

“Okay.”

They sit in silence for several minutes. Hazel turns the granola bar over and over in her hand.

“We should get going,” he says quietly.

He starts to roll up the bivy sack.

Hazel woodenly copies his actions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the long wait.
> 
> I am going to try and be consistent with the updating. But pregnancy sucks. And it would suck even if I had been trying for and wanting it. Who designed this ride, and when can I get off?
> 
> Thanks for reading! I don't respond to all the comments, but I _always_ appreciate them. And I promise to try to get around to responding at some point!


	92. Chapter 92

They sit in silence for a while.

Thorin leans forward and places a hand over Fili’s. “I’m sorry that this happened.”

Fili looks away, but he leaves his hand where it is.

“I chose this life, I didn’t think Julie would leave you kids alone. But then I saw the passenger lists of planes that were shot down the first day…” he trails off.

Fili clenches his free hand. 

“I sent people to the house. I added your names to a list. I was supposed to be notified if anyone found you.”

“Frerin was supposed to come.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Thorin smiles ruefully. “Your mother always looked past Frerin’s faults. He couldn’t even stand a heated conversation between two people. I suspect that the second he heard he ran for the isles.”

“But he was supposed to be with us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This delayed posting is brought to you by pregnancy and my husband giving me COVID.


	93. Chapter 93

The first few days they don’t make a lot of progress.

Kili stops to check his map more often than he needs to.

They sleep longer than necessary. And even if they aren’t sleeping they lay, hidden from sight, staring at nothing; lost in thought. 

Neither mentions it when the other has damp spots on their cheeks. 

They barely speak.

Hazel clings to Kili’s hand at any opportunity even when it makes walking over uneven ground difficult. 

He squeezes her hand and tries not to think about Miles’ glasses that he has tucked into an inner pocket of his pack.

When Hazel is holding his hand, when he is checking the map, rationing out food, he can keep his thoughts at bay. But in the darkness that is sometimes punctured by flashes of light and rolling booms when they are near a town of any notable size, he can’t quiet his worries. 

They roll over him in waves. 

_ Miles. _

_ What if we run out of food? _

_ What if we get lost? _

_ What if we’re already lost? _

_ What if everything is gone? _

_ What if... _

_ Fili… _

He sometimes wonders if Fili will hate him. That thought on its own is enough to make his eyes water, his chest squeeze, and his nose run as he tries to muffle his gasps in the spare sweatshirt that he uses as a pillow. 

With all of the other thoughts…

It buries him.


	94. Chapter 94

They skirt around any city or town that they can even though it adds time that Kili had not calculated for. And they try to cross any highways in their path early in the morning or in the late afternoon when it is dark. 

“How much further?” Hazel asks. 

Kili doesn’t look up from the map he has spread across his knees. “Probably 7 days. Maybe 8.”

“I hate walking,” Hazel grumbles. She kicks a rock down the slope that they are sitting on.

“Don’t!” Kili snaps.

They have been sitting here waiting until it gets dark enough to cross the road in front of them. Several vehicles have driven past so far, and Kili refuses to risk it despite Hazel’s whining that there aren’t any cars that she can see and that they should just go already.

Hazel pokes at another rock. 

She gasps. “Kili!”

His head snaps up; searching for flashes of guns, the green of uniforms. But there is nothing.

“What?”

“Look!” she taps his leg excitedly and points.

Kili finally sees what has excited her.

Standing among the tall, brown grass between them and the road is a lone deer. Its antlers blend in with the shrubs and grass. Only when it moves does Kili see it. 

“It’s so calm,” Hazel whispers. She leans forward, forearms and chin resting on her knees. 

“How can you tell?”

“See how relaxed he is? He’s paying attention; you can see his ears twitch. But he never stops moving.”

Kili sets the map aside and watches the deer. 

“He feels safe,” she says quietly. “I wish I could be that deer.”

“We’ll be safe soon.”

“Will we?”


	95. Chapter 95

It’s still early. Mist drifts among the widely spaced trees and winter browned grass. Small spots of green have started to appear here and there, but not a lot, and not often. The small sparks of green are thrilling. They distract Kili and Hazel from everything else going on in the world for a few seconds at a time.

Hazel slows and veers from Kili’s footsteps. 

She picks up a red, women’s dress shoe that was laying on the ground. She turns it over in her hands and darts to catch up with Kili again.

She picks dirt from the tread on the bottom of the shoe. 

Kili’s foot steps slow. Hazel’s slow to match his, but she is not paying attention.

Then Kili stops completely and Hazel nearly runs into his back.

Trees are broken. Things Hazel doesn’t recognize hang from tree branches. Kili recognizes them as the oxygen equipment on planes. Bits of airplane seats are scattered among the trees. Among the seats are blown open suitcases, clothing, bits of people’s lives.

Past the broken trees a wing of a plane stands tall.

Hazel makes a small noise.

Kili looks at her and follows her eyes.

Above them in the trees is a man dangling from a branch.

Kili swallows forcefully.

“Do you think Fili’s alright?” Hazel asks quietly. Her chin wobbles.

Kili answers automatically. “Yeah. Of course.”

“Come on.” Kili tears his eyes away from the man, and the rest of the destruction. He skirts around the debris field.

Hazel lingers for another minute. She nods. She looks up again. “It’ll be okay,” she tells herself quietly. She starts to follow Kili.

Then something catches her eye near a torn open suitcase.

“Chocolates!”

Hazel rushes forward and grabs the box. There is a tax attached. She turns it over.

\--

_ I know how much you love chocolate! _

_ Luv, _

_ Mum _

\--

Hazel tears the tag off and tucks it into her pocket before ripping over the box and popping a chocolate into her mouth.

  
  



End file.
